ECE ÖZDEMİROĞLU

Abstract

For too long, economic analysis focused unduly on transactions in the markets. We report GDP and its growth as the only measure of prosperity. We don’t systematically count the social and environmental costs of that growth.

Things are changing – in March 2021, United Nations launched its new national accounting guidance to incorporate natural capital in national accounts. Governments and businesses are following. We’ll discuss how such broader economic analysis, that values social and natural capital as well as it does financial and manufactured capital, can help reduce our environmental impacts and support technologies like renewable energy.

Biography

Ece Özdemiroğlu FRSA, is the Founding Director of eftec. She is a Member of the UK – Climate Change Committee working on Adaptation. She is also the convener of the British Standards Institute’s Assessing and Valuing Natural Capital expert group (SES/1/1/2) currently writing a standard on natural capital accounting –

Ece is an environmental economist specialising in valuing natural capital assets and using this evidence in accounting and appraisal. Her work has contributed to making nature more visible in decision making and she continues to work with forward-thinking central and local governments, businesses and NGOs. Believing that communicating evidence is just as important as gathering it, she enjoys speaking to and writing for different audiences and bringing academic and applied research together through her Associate Editor position for the Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy and has co-edited or co-authored 11 books.

Ece holds an MSc in Environmental and Resource Economics from University College London and a BA in Economics from Istanbul University; she works in both English and Turkish.