Greening India's Growth: Costs, Valuations, and Tradeoffs

Featuring
Muthukumara Mani
Senior Environmental Economist, Sustainable Development Department, World Bank

Hosted by
Arvind Subramanian
Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development and Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics

India’s rapid economic growth offers an opportunity to lift millions out of poverty. But this may come at a steep cost to its environment and natural resources. Muthukumara Mani will speak on his recent book Greening India's Growth: Costs, Valuations and Tradeoffs, which analyses India’s growth from an economic perspective and assesses whether India can grow in a “green” and sustainable manner.

Muthukumara will address the physical and monetary costs and losses of environmental health and natural resources driven by economic growth, estimate the value of ecosystem services from the major biomes in India, with a view to preserving them for the future, and explore trade-offs between economic growth and environmental sustainability, with particular attention to air pollution. His presentation focuses on the way forward in terms of policies, measures, and instruments as India attempts to balance the challenges of maintaining economic prosperity while managing its environmental resources.