Profit vs planet: an irreversible tug of war

This article is part of the Financial Times free schools access programme. Details/registration here. It is the winning entry in the 2025 FT/Crimson Global Foundation essay competition on conflict resolution.

Unchecked exploitation of natural resources is depleting the planet’s assets and accelerating climate change. Nations are scrambling for first-mover advantage: who controls what, how much can be extracted and who foots the bill for damage done to others.

From rising tensions in the once peaceful Arctic to rampant deforestation in the Amazon, we are extracting and destroying the natural capital on which long-term environmental and economic prosperity depends. The consequences are decisive for the future of humanity, yet the pace of degradation is accelerating.

The Arctic, once emblematic of international peace and co-operation, is rapidly becoming a contested corridor. As ice recedes, new shipping lanes open shorter routes between major markets. This accessibility has intensified geopolitical tensions, with all Arctic countries vying for control of the resource-rich region, believed to contain 13 per cent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 per cent of undiscovered gas.

Even China has claimed “near-Arctic” status. Territorial disputes loom, as President Donald Trump seeks his 51st state and President Vladimir Putin expands military bases on Russia’s northern frontier.

The conflict is both geopolitical and economic, in tension with global climate objectives. Beyond the current posturing lies a paradox: how can major powers be incentivised to mitigate climate change when they stand to profit directly from melting icebergs?

In a similar vein, on April 24, Trump signed an executive order to fast-track deep-sea mining in both US and, yet more controversially, extraterritorial waters. His administration is undermining international co-operation by disregarding the International Seabed Authority’s regulatory role.

Deep-sea mining could destroy millions of years’ worth of natural seabed formations, wipe out countless endemic species and release harmful “carbon pockets” into the atmosphere. Scientists warn that we do not understand these fragile ecosystems, meaning the true damage could be far greater than expected.

Yet the economic gains are difficult to ignore: US GDP could rise by as much as $300bn over 10 years, creating at least 100,000 jobs. On the day of the announcement, shares in The Metals Company, a deep-sea mining business, jumped 45 per cent.

Meanwhile, the Amazon rainforest faces the same tension: Brazilian GDP growth and individual enrichment are pitted against the preservation of the global ecosystem. Under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, deforestation has more than halved, but in July 2024, it surged 33 per cent year on year during a strike by environmental inspectors.

The fragility of progress is clear. The problem is structural. Cleared land drives profits for actors far removed from the consequences, while poorer nations are left with rising seas and temperatures. Like the Arctic and the seabed, the Amazon is at the heart of global ecological stability, and its destruction has far-reaching effects.

These are public goods that benefit everyone but conveniently appear on no balance sheet, letting their depletion go unaccounted for. The defining challenge is that markets excel at pricing scarcity but fail to value shared abundance.

The Arctic, the ocean floor and rainforests are not owned by any one country, yet their fate is being determined by a handful of powerful actors with short-term incentives. Global preservation efforts have lacked scale, authority and — most crucially — political will.

In the absence of regulation, exploitation becomes a race, a prisoner’s dilemma on a planetary scale. A recent report by PwC’s global Centre for Nature Positive Business estimated that 55 per cent of the world’s GDP ($58tn) is highly or moderately dependent on nature.

We must assign it a tangible value through a framework like the “One-Earth Balance Sheet” — a comprehensive accounting system that incorporates natural capital such as forests, oceans and biodiversity into global economic assessments. With the computing power of artificial intelligence, we can aspire to build comprehensive, dynamic models that robustly evaluate “natural capital”.

Governments must integrate forests, fisheries and carbon sinks into economic planning as assets, not afterthoughts. A globally integrated system, administered by a para-governmental organisation with effective verification and cross-border enforcement authority (such as the OECD, the UN Environment Programme or the World Bank’s WAVES programme), could shift incentives decisively.

As the EU’s emissions trading scheme has shown, effective co-operation can internalise environmental costs and reward restraint. We are waging a war against ourselves, and without swift and united action, we will all lose.

Florian Golser is a student at University College School, London