1、 河南科技学院新科学院 2013 届本科毕业论文（设计） 外文文献及翻译 Environmental Accounting 学生姓名 ： 叶乃润 所在系别 ： 经济系 所学专业 ： 国际经济与贸易 导师姓名 ： 郭晓明 （助教） 完成时间 ： 2013 年 4 月 18 日 1 Environmental Accounting by Joy E. Hecht Interest is growing in modifying national income accounting systems to promote understanding of the links between econo
2、my and environment. The field of environmental accounting has made great strides in the past two decades, moving from a rather arcane endeavor to one tested in dozens of countries and well established in a few. But the idea that nations might integrate the economic role of the environment into their
3、 income accounts is neither a quick sell nor a quick process； it has been under discussion since the 1960s. Despite the difficulties and controversies described in this article, however, interest is growing in modifying national income accounting systems to promote understanding of the links between
4、 economy and environment. Environmental accounting is underway in several dozen countries, where bureaucrats, statisticians, and other proponents both foreign and domestic have initiated activities over the past few decades. Several countries have made continuous investments in building routine data
5、 systems, which are integrated into existing statistical systems and economic planning activities. Others have made more limited efforts to calculate a few indicators, or analyze a single sector. Some of the earliest research on environmental accounting was done at RFF by Henry Peskin, working on th
6、e design of accounts for the United States. One of the first countries to build environmental accounts is Norway, which began collecting data on energy sources, fisheries, forests, and minerals in the 1970s to address resource scarcity. Over time, the Norwegians have expanded their accounts to inclu
7、de data on air pollutant emissions. Their accounts feed into a model of the national economy, which policymakers use to assess the energy implications of alternate growth strategies. Inclusion of these data also allows them to anticipate the impacts of different growth patterns on compliance with in
8、ternational conventions on pollutant emissions. More recently, a number of resource-dependent countries have become interested in measuring depreciation of their natural assets and adjusting their GDPs environmentally. One impetus for their interest was the 1989 study “Wasting Assets: Natural Resour
9、ces in the National Income Accounts,” in which Robert Repetto and his colleagues at the World Resources Institute estimated the depreciation of Indonesias forests, petroleum reserves, and soil assets. Once adjusted to account for that depreciation, Indonesias GDP and growth rates both sank significa
10、ntly below conventional figures. While “Wasting Assets” called many to action, it also operated as a brake, leading many economists and statisticians to warn against a focus on green GDP, because it tells decision makers nothing about the causes or solutions for environmental problems. Since that ti
11、me, several developing countries have made long-term commitments to broad-based environmental accounting. Namibia began work on resource accounts in 1994, addressing such questions as whether the government has been able to 2 capture rents from the minerals and fisheries sectors, how to allocate sca
12、rce water supplies, and how rangeland degradation affects the value of livestock. The Philippines began work on environmental accounts in 1990. The approach used there is to build all economic inputs and outputs into the accounts, including non marketed goods and services of the environment. Thus Fi
13、lipinos estimate monetary values for such items as gathered fuel wood and the waste disposal services provided by air, water, and land； they then add in direct consumption of such services as recreation and aesthetic appreciation of the natural world. While their methodology is controversial, these
14、accounts have provided Philippine government agencies and researchers with a rich array of data for policymaking and analysis. The United States has not been a leader in the environmental accounting arena. At the start of the Clinton administration, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) made a foray
15、 into environmental accounting in the minerals sector, but this preliminary attempt became embroiled in political controversy and faced opposition from the minerals industry. Congress then asked the National Research Council (NRC) to form a blue ribbon panel to consider what the nation should do in
16、the way of environmental accounting. Since then, Congressional appropriations to BEA have been accompanied by an explicit prohibition on environmental accounting work. The ban may be lifted, however, once the recommendations of the NRC study are made public. How environmental accounting is being don
17、e varies in a number of respects, notably the magnitude of the investment required, the objectivity of the data, the ability to compare different kinds of environmental impacts, and the kinds of policy purposes to which they may be applied. Here are some of the methods currently in use. Natural Reso
18、urce Accounts. These include data on stocks of natural resources and changes in them caused by either natural processes or human use. Such accounts typically cover agricultural land, fisheries, forests, minerals and petroleum, and water. In some countries, the accounts also include monetary data on
19、the value of such resources. But attempts at valuation raise significant technical difficulties. It is fairly easy to track the value of resource flows when the goods are sold in markets, as in the case of timber and fish. Valuing changes in the stocks, however, is more difficult because they could
20、be the result either of a physical change in the resource or of a fluctuation in market price. Green GDP. Developing a gross domestic product that includes the environment is also a matter of controversy. Most people actively involved in building environmental accounts minimize its importance. Becau
21、se environmental accounting methods are not standardized, a green GDP can have a different meaning in each project that calculates it, so values are not comparable across countries. Moreover, while a green GDP can draw attention to policy problems, it is not useful for figuring out how to resolve th
22、em. Nevertheless, most accounting projects that include monetary values do calculate this indicator. Great interest in it exists despite its limitations. Environmental accounting would receive a substantial boost if an international consensus could be reached on methodology. The UN Statistics Department has
