In the space of an hour and a half, economist Dr Pavan Sukhdev travelled from shrimp farms in Thailand to granaries in South America, from agriculture in Andhra Pradesh to mining and food systems around the world. Speaking at the first Darryl D’monte memorial lecture seven weeks ago, Sukhdev, also a Goodwill Ambassador of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), held forth, with an insightful presentation, on “making the invisible visible” about the role of nature in economics.
In every example selected, he explained how not accounting for nature’s bounty had yielded higher private profits and how private enterprise, sometimes private-government collaborations too, did not credit nature in their profit-and-loss books. Nature’s contribution to our economic systems around the world, to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) considered the barometer of economic development, is invisible, he said and left the audience with the unforgettable line: “Nature never sends us an invoice, that’s why it is not counted”.
It is a powerful line to drive home the idea that there is always a natural cost or environmental cost to any development project which is hardly ever acknowledged, which has to be paid at some point later by future generations perhaps. There is a “hidden economics of nature” as Sukhdev put it, hidden or invisible only because it is made so by the prevailing economic system around the world. This line – nature never sends us an invoice – should be framed and hung in good view of officials and politicians who believe that the environment is an impediment in their grand plans of mega projects.
This line came to mind while reading the latest update on the spate of work being completed for Mumbai’s metro network, particularly the car shed for Metro 3 line forcibly pushed into the Aarey forest. The controversial project was stayed by the Uddhav Thackeray-led government in November 2019, it was the first project to be reinstated by the Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government in July 2021 after they assumed power as chief minister and deputy chief minister respectively. Despite the two- and half-year delay, the car shed is now scheduled to be completed by October this year, according to news reports.
It is difficult to pass by the car shed site while on the Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road and not see the massive area – 30 acres or nearly 23 football fields area – which is now stark grey instead of green. There has been considerable back and forth in courts recently, including the Supreme Court, on the number of trees that were cut and permitted to be cut down to fully accommodate the car shed. Where Aarey’s trees used to be complete with their irreplaceable and delicate ecological biodiversity, there will eventually be shunting lines, stabling lines, depot, ramps, a maintenance workshop, a power sub-station, stores, automatic washing facilities for rakes, control rooms and offices.
The 30 acres of Aarey was merely land and the trees were impediments in the grand metro project, whereas their replacement with all the built structures is emblematic of economic development, if you go by the official version. Nature in those 30 acres will never send an invoice to the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC) but it will extract a cost from the city in other ways – increased urban heat island effect, less area for rainwater to soak underground which means a larger runoff and floods, loss of the biodiversity, and so on. What is the economics of nature here? What will the true cost of the car shed be if this is added to the estimated cost of nearly Rs 330 crores? What will be the true cost of the Metro 3 line if the economics of nature is added to the project cost now projected at Rs 33,400 crores?
The idea that the economics of nature has to be acknowledged and factored into the total cost of any such ‘development’ project sounds radical, but the reality is that coming this far in GDP-centred economics without ever factoring the full or true cost of nature should be surprising. What, for example, is the true cost of the Coastal Road if the economics of nature in factored into the project cost? We will never know because this economics is rarely reckoned with.
The resistance of environmentalists and tribals of Aarey to the car shed has been cunningly projected as anti-development by a few GDP-developmentwallahs, to extrapolate that the opposition is to the entire metro project. This is myopic, they conflate issues to divert attention from the focus that’s called for here: the economics of nature in Aarey. Mumbai needed an efficient metro network system 15 years ago, this is now a late development thanks to political shenanigans at the state and city level which hardly focused on Mumbai’s needs.
Of course, Mumbai needs the metro including the Metro 3 line which will connect areas of the city that are unconnected by the rail network now such as business districts of MIDC-SEEPZ and BKC, Worli, Kalbadevi and Nariman Point where the nearest rail head is a few kilometres away. The resistance of environmentalists was not about the metro line but always about the car shed location. Why was Aarey chosen over alternative locations then available or possible? Is the car shed the harbinger of other projects helmed by public as well as private authorities? Who stands to gain monetary profits with Aarey opening up for such “development”?
Similarly, the Coastal Road which is sold to Mumbaikars as a fast traffic-free route between south Mumbai and western suburbs. The project cost stood at around Rs 12,500 crores when it began and some phases of it have visibly changed the city’s skyline and its relationship with the sea on the western coast. Indeed, Mumbai’s coastline has been altered since the 18th century with every phase thrusting “development” where the sea used to be. Nariman Point, the ground zero of India’s commerce and finance through the 1970-80-90s, was built through landfill at the city’s tip.
For the coastal road, we are told that 274 acres have been “reclaimed”. The word reclamation itself is a misnomer because we do not recover or repossess from the sea what was ours, instead we go into the sea and landfill it because we see commercial gains in doing so. Is there an economics of nature here at play? Indeed, except that there are no clear calculations available. Has the sea sent invoices, to paraphrase Sukhdev? Each time that the city floods with heavy rain when the water finds no way out to the sea, the invoice is smacked on our faces except that we do not see it as a nature’s invoice for what we have taken from it. What “bill” the new landfilled area will send to the city, only time will tell.
It is not a coincidence that Darryl D’Monte, counted among the pioneers of environmental journalism in India, stood up to protest the Coastal Road during the later years of his life. He understood well what Sukhdev put into words that evening – nature never sends us an invoice. It is time we took stock and counted the full true cost of projects factoring in nature's unsent invoices.
Smruti Koppikar, journalist and urban chronicler, writes extensively on cities, development, gender, and the media. She is also the Founder Editor of ‘Question of Cities’
