When we measure corporate performances, we don’t include our impacts on nature and what our business costs society. That has to stop.

Pavan Sukhdev has been a prominent advocate for “natural capital” accounting—bringing the value of ecosystems and social externalities into economic and corporate decision-making—through initiatives such as The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) and later work on corporate sustainability metrics. The quote reflects arguments he has repeatedly made in public talks and interviews in the wake of the 2008–09 financial crisis and the growing ESG/sustainability reporting movement: that conventional corporate performance measures (profit, GDP-like growth metrics, shareholder returns) systematically omit environmental damage and social costs. It is framed as a call to reform accounting and reporting so that business success is evaluated net of harms to nature and society.

Sukhdev is criticizing conventional corporate accounting and performance metrics for treating environmental damage and social harms as “externalities”—real costs that fall on ecosystems and communities rather than on company balance sheets. The quote argues that as long as nature depletion, pollution, and broader societal impacts are excluded from measurement, firms can appear successful while eroding the foundations of long-term prosperity. His closing insistence—“That has to stop”—signals a normative call for reform: integrating natural and social capital into decision-making through tools such as full-cost accounting, ESG reporting, and policies that internalize external costs. The underlying significance is a shift from narrow shareholder-value metrics toward accountability for planetary and social limits.