Chapter 2 Planet

The sun rises and the sun sets,

and hurries back to where it rises.

The wind blows to the south

and turns to the north;

round and round it goes,

ever returning on its course.

All streams flow into the sea,

yet the sea is never full.

To the place the streams come from,

there they return again.

? New International Version Bible, 1984, Ecclesiastes 1:5-7

Environment

Before Adam Smith published his seminal book The Wealth of Nations in 1776, he published The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759. It's easy to mistake his fervor for individual freedom, competition, free-market economics, and capitalism as a system in a vacuum.

However, his economic work was written after - and assumed a foundation of - his moral work. The ethics he presents in The Theory of Moral Sentiments can be applied not only to human relations but also to our relations with our environment. The Wealth of Nations and our economies do not operate in a vacuum. Nor do we.

Indeed, the wave of attention businesspeople have paid recently to ethical concerns, including environment, social, and governance (ESG) issues ironically generated economic activity. It spawned a new industry - ESG consulting. After infatuation and growth, ESG entered a period of controversy over whether ESG efforts and investments (including consulting fees) are actually worthwhile. We examine it with green accounting and triple-bottom-line metrics, and then choose a side to argue.

I'll not rehash the arguments here or give a treatise on green economics. Others have done a much better job than I currently can. All I'll say on the topic is this: we cannot run our economies in a vacuum forever, because there's another vacuum in which they operate - Earth.

Our planet recycles our mistakes and brings them back to us.

Scientists have clearly linked the state and rate of climate change to human/economic activity. That said, we have clearly shown that we can gather the political will to reverse some of the damage we've done. The big win example is the ozone hole above Antarctica. After banning chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the hole is repairing and expected to heal by 2066 (Newburger, 2023).

But do we have the business will to manage our economy and ecology together, for further wins?

Natural capitalism and the idea that it could be the next industrial revolution (Hawken et al., 2000) made a huge impression on what would later become our first leadership team - Bhau, Nishi, my husband (Chris Marshall), and me. Nishi investigated further (with a little help from the rest of us) and wrote two whitepapers (both 2009) - one called "EDEN: Economic Development with Environmental Nurturing" and the other titled "Managing Natural Assets."

What we learned with those first two whitepapers surprised us. Apparently, at the time, the biggest industry in the world (for income generation and employment) after oil was travel and tourism, and the fastest-growing segment was ecotourism - wildlife and adventure.

Fast forward 9 years to 2018, and global tourism continued to grow, outperforming global economic growth for the eighth consecutive year -

including construction, healthcare, retail, and wholesale (Yes Bank Strategic Government Advisory and FICCI, 2019). It accounted for 10.4% of global GDP and contributed USD 8.81 trillion to the global economy (USD 2.75 trillion directly).

Travel provided 10% of global employment (319 million jobs), and 20% of all new jobs created during the previous 5 years were in tourism.

India was the 8th largest contributor to global travel and tourism GDP, providing 27 million jobs (43 million, including indirect jobs) and USD 247 billion at 6.7% growth - 9.2% of its economy overall. Global travel and tourism was the third-largest foreign exchange earner for the country, at USD 29 billion.

Today, different reports place travel and tourism in various spots in the global top 10 industries. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (2022, using 2021 figures), tourism generated USD 170 billion in India alone (5.8% of its GDP), supporting 32 million jobs. Growth is predicted at a healthy 7.8% per annum.

Whether the travel and tourism segment is #1 or merely in the top 10, it is economically important. We need to pay attention, manage it well, and leverage it for growth and wellbeing.

When people do travel to or within India, what do they want to see? Many would say the Taj Mahal and the tiger. The tiger is enough of an attraction that former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, an eminent economist, said India's tiger reserves should be managed as profit centers.

Does that mean a reserve that doesn't turn a profit will be shut down? We doubt that, since they also support missions of conservation and research, as well as supplying life-sustaining eco-services (described more fully below).

Profitability doubts notwithstanding, what if we did manage the reserves as profit centers? Any business manager or leader can tell you that measures and targets can drive (or at least direct) performance. Without measures of how efficiently the assets are managed and what returns are gathered from them, it would be hard (or impossible) for the reserves to reach their full potential. (FYI, the Taj Mahal is considered a well-maintained, high-profit historic asset, not a natural one.)

So how much should a reserve earn, and who's the competition?

Lion destination Kruger National Park in South Africa attracts 1.7 million visitors annually and is reported to support USD 66 billion of wages and salaries (including day and overnight visitors, but apparently not all related revenues) (Wikipedia, Kruger National Park, 2015 figures).

The top-earning national parks in the US earn from USD 179 million to USD 734 million in "visitor spending" annually, per park (the top spot taken by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park), and annual visitors range from 2 million to 9.4 million per park (Explore, 2014). However, the effective revenues should be much more, since only "visitor spending" at the parks is tracked, not related spending in nearby private businesses, such as hotels and restaurants outside the parks (not to mention flights, coach busses, etc.).

Annually, India attracts 11 million foreign visitors and earns USD 30 billion in foreign-exchange revenue from tourism (Wikipedia, Tourism in India, 2019 pre-COVID figures). If just 10% of tourists spent their money in Kanha seeing the iconic tiger, tiger parks would earn USD 3 billion (assuming comparable facilities and services to the rest of the nation).

South Africa attracted 8.9 million tourists in the same year as the above park visit figure (Statista, 2023, 2015 figure). If we apply a park tourist rate of 19% (1.7 million park visitors/8.9 million national visitors) to India's tourism revenues (USD 30 billion), then tiger park earnings would be USD 5.7 billion.

Perhaps China would be a better comparison country. India and China are both in Asia, both include roughly 1.4 billion citizens, and each offers both historical and tiger tourism. Pre-COVID, China was Asia Pacific's top destination, with nearly 66 million visitors, who spent over USD 40 billion (Wikipedia, World Tourism Rankings, 2019 figures). India was #8 with nearly 18 million visitors, who spent over USD 30 billion. If India attracted the same tourist spending as China, and we assumed that 19% was earned by the parks, tiger earnings would be USD 7.6 billion (19% of USD 40 billion) (see Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1: Tourist getting a close-up shot in the Kanha Nature Reserve.

Is this the actual lower and upper range of target earnings? Probably not, since there are many factors I've not included in my back-of-envelope musings. However, it should make the point that comparisons can be made and targets set to encourage proper management for both protecting our natural assets and using them well to benefit the economy (and all the people in it). We should also investigate the choices tourists make (shall I go to Kruger or Kanha this year?) and why.

So, how much do the tiger parks actually earn?

I don't know.

It may speak to my lack of resourcefulness as a researcher, or it could be that no one tracks those revenues. I've found valuation in terms of the resources held in the parks and found park earnings reported for a selection of parks collectively (e.g., Pench, Kanha, Bandhavgarh, and Panna Nature Reserves together).

However, I suspect the real answer is that we aren't tracking what we aren't yet managing as a revenue-generating natural asset.

What was the economic valuation I found of Kanha Nature Reserve? I'll address that below in the section on valuing a tree, tiger, and reserve. For now, suffice it to say that ecological and...