When Geography Becomes an Asset Class: A Conversation with the Professor

Professor answered, “Precisely. Mountains are no longer geological features. Ice sheets are no longer climatic buffers. Countries are no longer primarily sovereign entities. Everything, quietly and efficiently, has been reclassified as an asset class.”

It sounded rather dramatic to me.

Professor continued.

“Take Venezuela. One of the world’s largest proven oil reserves. Its political instability is framed as an unrealised opportunity as an asset perceived to be underperforming relative to its extractive potential. The stewardship is demonstrated by taking over that resource for extraction and raising conversion efficiency on a scale.”

“So, resource management and resource efficiency become morality,” I said.

Professor puffed his cigar.
“Exactly Dr Modak.

Now consider Greenland. Until recently, it was ice, ecology, remoteness. In today’s resource-driven geopolitical and economic framing, that same ice is increasingly viewed differently. Melting ice is seen as opening access to subsurface minerals and hydrocarbons, new shipping routes (e.g., Arctic passages) and strategic military and commercial positions.

Ukraine, of course, is a tragedy first and foremost. But it also reminds us that fertile soils, energy corridors, minerals, and strategic geography are never irrelevant to conflict. Wars are never only about resources but resources often decide their persistence and their aftermath.”

I could understand Professors anguish as in such circumstances statements from counties follow, all rounded, cautious, politically safe. They acknowledge concern but action nothing.

Professor paused, then added quietly,

“Increasingly, energy security, mineral independence, and supply-chain resilience will shape the logic behind wars and so-called ‘takeovers’. They convert land, water, soil, and subsoil into strategic assets, defended with extraordinary resolve for the interest of few.

“What troubles you most about this shift, Professor?” I asked.

“The accounting,” he replied, matter-of-factly.
“Oil reserves are assets. Minerals are assets. Land is an asset. But ecosystems are not. Aquifers are not. Climate stability is not. Biodiversity survives only as a footnote; useful for speeches but inconvenient for spreadsheets.

Natural assets remain the off-balance sheet. Which means they receive no protection premium.”

He leaned back and said
“And this logic travels remarkably well on all scales”

“Take the Aravalli mountains in India,” he said.
“Among the oldest geological formations on Earth,  they regulate groundwater, slow desertification, stabilise regional climate, and protect one of North India’s last ecological buffers between fertile plains and expanding aridity.”

“But,” he continued, “policy does not see them that way anymore.”

I asked him what he meant.

“The Aravallis are now dismantled through definitions taking support of the law.

He explained.

“Protection in India hinges on how land is classified. Forests are protected. Aravallis, inconveniently, are not always forests. Large stretches are labelled as ‘revenue land’, ‘gair mumkin pahad’, or ‘degraded scrub’. Once so classified, ecological function becomes irrelevant. The mountain is reduced to surface ownership and sub-surface rights.”

“And mining?” I asked.

“Legally framed as minor mineral extraction,” he replied.
“Stone, quartzite, marble, limestone are the materials essential for real estate, infrastructure, cement, and urban expansion. These are not glamorous minerals, but they are extracted at scale. Their impact is not localised excavation, but the gradual levelling of entire landscapes.”

He smiled thinly.

“The policy risk lies not in illegal mining alone but in cumulative legality. One lease, one exemption, one clearance at a time. Environmental Impact Assessments remain project-limited. The mountain range, as a system, never enters the assessment.”

“And the real asset?” I asked.

“Land,” he said without hesitation.
“Once the stone is removed, the flattened terrain becomes developable. Mining is often merely the first monetisation. Real estate is the second.”

He paused.

“The risks are well known. Groundwater collapse. Increased heat stress. Accelerated desertification. Loss of ecological connectivity. But none of these appear on balance sheets. They show up later : in water tankers, heatwaves, floods, and public health costs.”

“And cities like Megacity Mumbai?” I asked.

Professor sighed.

“Mumbai is simply the urban expression of the same logic.”

Mumbai feels like it is being rebuilt in a hurry. Everything at once like roads, metros, bridges, coastlines. Simultaneity is the most underestimated environmental risk.

Air pollution no longer feels accidental. The air is thick with dust. Mumbai is choking because speed has become policy and silence from Mumbai citizens its most efficient lubricant.

“No one explains cumulative impact,” I said.
“No one explains why everything had to happen together.”

“Because sequencing delays capital,” Professor replied.
“And capital dislikes pauses.”

I said, “I keep thinking Mumbai, the Aravallis, Venezuela, Greenland, and Ukraine are not separate stories.”

“You are right Dr Modak, they are not,” Professor said.
“They are different scales of the same logic.”

“Globally, resources are treated as strategic assets to be secured or grabbed or defended. Domestically, environmental institutions struggle to assert protection of resources when confronted by capital, urgency, and political might. Cities are governed less by planning and more by real-estate arithmetic.”

“There is no grand conspiracy here,” he concluded.
“When resources define power, restraint looks weaker. When urgency dominates governance, silence becomes systemic. That is the sad part of the story”

I whispered to myself “In resource-rich geographies, political instability is rarely an accident and could this be the grand global conspiracy?”

But now the Law of the Jungle still prevails. Lions no longer roar here. They speak in a civilized human voice, file the necessary paperwork, commission reports and declare disclosures when they hunt their prey. Everything proceeds on schedule as if the intent never existed.

“And sustainability?” I asked.

Professor smiled.

“As I said it remains in the annexure—invited to comment, after the balance sheet is approved.”

Professor extinguished his cigar and the room fell quiet. It felt as though the world itself had paused; watching, unable to see road ahead because of uncertainty, and with faces slightly stunned and numb. Not because we do not understand what is happening, but because we recognise it too clearly. The King is now stark naked. The future is no longer something waiting for the next generation; it is being shaped, traded, and used up right now. Climate change, conflicts, polluted air, and shrinking resources are no longer distant warnings. They are signs that parts of the future are already leaking into the present.

What makes this moment especially serious is who pays the price. Many of today’s decisions pass their costs forward; to young people, to children not yet born, to ecosystems that cannot speak for themselves. This is why intergenerational ethics is no longer just a philosophical idea; it is a real test of fairness. Change, the Professor once said, begins when a generation quietly refuses to accept damaged systems as normal. The real question now is whether future generations will see our choices as conscious decisions and whether we are leaving them with a world that has fewer options than we inherited.

We are balancing today’s profits by pushing the planet into permanent debt and calling it sustainable development. This is not reformable at the margins. It calls for a quiet revolution, one that rewrites the balance sheet, reclaims natural limits, and refuses to pass unpaid debts to the future.