It is not the first time that Chami has put a price on a species. In 2019, he published a report with other IMF economists looking at the climate benefits of protecting whales. The analysis found that, when you add up the value of the carbon sequestered by a whale during its lifetime, the average great whale is worth more than $2m (£1.48m), with the entire global stock amounting to over $1tn (£740bn).