1、Environmental Accounting Where We Are Now, Where We Are Heading by Joy E. Hecht Interest is growing in modifying national income accounting systems to promote understanding of the links between economy and environment. The field of environmental accounting has made great strides in the past two deca
2、des, 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 income accounts is neither a quick sell nor a quick process； it has been under discussion since the
3、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 economy and environment. Why Change? Governments around the world develop economic data systems know
4、n as national income accounts to calculate macroeconomic indicators such as gross domestic product. Building a nations economic use of the environment into such accounts is a response to several perceived flaws in the System of National Accounts (SNA), as defined by the United Nations and used inter
5、nationally. One flaw in the SNA often cited is that the cost of environmental protection cannot be identified. Consequently, money spent, say, to put pollution control devices on smokestacks increases GDP, even though the expenditure is not economically productive, some argue. These critics call for
6、 differentiating “defensive” expenditures from others within the accounts. Also misleading is the fact that some environmental goods are not marketed though they provide economic value. Fuelwood gathered in forests, meat and fish gathered for consumption, and medicinal plants are examples. So are dr
7、inking and irrigation water, whose sale prices reflect the cost of distribution and treatment infrastructure, but not the water itself. While some countries do include such goods in their national income accounts, no standard practices exist for doing so. When nonmarketed goods are included in the a
8、ccounts, they still cannot be distinguished from those that are marketed. Valuing environmental services such as the watershed protection that forests afford and the crop fertilization that insects provide is difficult. Though some experts call for their inclusion in environmentally adjusted account
9、s, typically neither the economic value nor the degradation of these services is included. On the other hand, however, the alternate goods and services needed to replace themwater treatment plants, for exampledo contribute to GDP, which can be rather misleading. Still another problem is that nationa
10、l income accounts treat the depreciation of manufactured capital and natural capital differently. Physical capitala building or a machine, for instanceis depreciated in accordance with conventional business accounting principles, while all consumption of natural capital is accounted for as income. T
11、hus the accounts of a country that harvests its forests unsustainably will show high income for a few years, but will not reflect the destruction of the productive forest asset. While opinions vary on how to depreciate natural capital, they converge on the need to do so. Which Indicators Are Useful?
12、 Some proponents advocate simple “flag” indicators to alert policymakers to the broad role of the environment in the economy, for example, comparing conventional GDP with environmentally adjusted GDP, or conventional savings with so-called “genuine” savings that account for environmental factors. Bo
13、th of these indicators can provide valuable warnings of the impacts of environmental degradation on an economy. However, such flags are less useful in determining the source of environmental harm or identifying a policy response. For this reason, many economists place primary importance not on the b
14、ottom line, but on the underlying data used to build environmental accounts. These data can help answer such questions as how natural catastrophes like the fires that raged in Indonesia in the summer of 1998 may affect economic growth, or how environmental protection policies such as green taxes may
15、 affect the economy. Who Is Doing This? 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 buildin
16、g routine data 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,
17、 working on the 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 acc
18、ounts to include 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 comp
19、liance with international 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:
20、Natural Resources 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
21、sank significantly 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 decisionmakers nothing about the causes or solutions for environmental problems.
22、Since that time, 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 capture rents from the minerals and fisheries sectors, how to a
23、llocate scarce 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 nonmarketed goods and services of the environmen
24、t. Thus Filipinos estimate monetary values for such items as gathered fuelwood 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 controversia
25、l, these 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) mad
26、e a foray 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 shou
27、ld do in 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. Toward Consensus on Method Envir
28、onmental accounting would receive a substantial boost if an international consensus could be reached on methodology. The UN Statistics Department has coordinated some of the ongoing efforts toward this end since the 1980s. In 1993, the UN published the System for Integrated Economic and Environmenta
29、l Accounting (SEEA) as an annex to the 1993 revisions of the SNA. SEEA is structured as a series of methodological options, which include most of the different accounting activities described above； users choose the options most appropriate to their needs. No consensus exists on the various methods
30、that the UN recommended. In fact, SEEA is now undergoing revision by the so-called “London Group,” comprised primarily of national income accountants and statisticians from OECD countries. The groups work will be an important step toward consensus on accounting methods, but the process will be lengt
31、hy: Development of the conventional SNA took some forty years. Toward Widespread Use A number of steps can be taken now toward the goal of ensuring that environmental accounting is as well established as the SNA. First, information must circulate freely about existing environmental accounts and how they are contributing to economic and environmental policy. Ongoing work needs to be identified and systematically reviewed and analyzed to learn lessons, which may inform the design and
