Many countries are undertaking projects to develop environmental accounts, to integrate them with national accounts or to create environmentally-adjusted macroeconomic indicators, including Green GDP. Early adopters of integrated environmental-economic accounts include the Netherlands, France, and the Philippines. This section documents the initiatives undertaken by, or concerning the G20 countries.
Argentina A team of researchers at the University of Buenos Aires and CONICET organized the ARKLEMS+LAND project. Their research, based on the KLEMS database framework (Capital, Labour, Energy, Material and Service Inputs), measures and analyses the sources of economic growth, productivity and competitiveness in the Argentinian economy. The database includes the contributions of "Natural Resource as Land and Subsoil Assets" services to GDP growth. He derives data from the privatization of Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales (YPF), Argentina's state-owned oil enterprise, and using each method, generates estimated resource rent and depletion cost values for Argentina's reserves of petroleum. The energy and water accounts found on the National Balance Sheet are produced annually. As well, subsoil assets, timber for producing logs, and land are valued monetarily, and included on the non-produced assets in the National Balance Sheet.
Britain The UK produces Environmental Accounts, consistent with the SEEA framework, that are separated into three dimensions: natural resource accounts, physical flows and monetary accounts. The majority of the data is measured in physical units; monetary units are used where relevant, and if the necessary data is available. In 2012, the ONS planned to run a study on producing a full ecosystem account, with high priority on physical and monetary forestry accounts. The Office also set out a series of goals to include land use and cover accounts in the 2013 Environmental Accounts. The Government has pledged to develop full UK Environmental Accounts by 2020. This work is being led by the ONS and the
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). The UK
Natural Capital Committee was providing advice to help inform this project. In December 2012, the ONS published a 'roadmap' that set out the work-plan for the project. The incorporation of natural capital into the national accounts, if done properly, would enable a high level picture to be obtained of trends in the state of the nation's natural assets through time. This in turn would help demonstrate the implications of actions impacting on the natural environment and may, therefore, encourage policy-makers to ensure natural assets are in future used sustainably through the appropriate use of policy levers. The
Natural Capital Committee was also developing a methodology for corporate natural capital accounting. It was undertaking a pilot project throughout 2014 with a range of organisations to test and refine this methodology and is encouraging organisations that own or manage land to develop corporate natural capital accounts.
Brazil Despite reports that Brazil would produce a Green GDP in the lead-up to the Rio+20, there is no indication that this process was undertaken.
Canada Statistics Canada does not redefine or supplement existing national accounts aggregates with environmental information. However, it has developed the Canadian System of Environmental and Resource Accounts (CSERA), which "provides some information for those who may wish to calculate such 'green aggregates. It also includes estimates of land in the "tangible non-produced assets" section of the Canadian balance sheet. The CSERA has three dimensions: Natural Resource Stock Accounts; Material and Energy Flow Accounts; and Environmental Protection Expenditure Accounts. The Natural Resource Stock Accounts are measured in physical and monetary units. The two-year study approximated the market value, for 2002, of the region's forestry, mining, oil and gas, and hydroelectric generation sectors at $48.9 billion.
China In 1997, Beijing authorities carried out a project assessing the city's Green GDP. This set a series of precedents for environmentally adjusted indicators in the country. Over the next decade, several regional pilot projects were undertaken by local authorities. Between 2001 and 2004, Chinese authorities worked with Statistics Norway to carry out a Green GDP assessment of Chongqing. A breakdown of the figure shows that water pollution, air pollution, and solid waste and accidents cost 286.28 billion yuan, 219.8 billion yuan, and 5.74 billion yuan, respectively. At the same time as the report was released, SEPA Vice Minister Zhu Guangya issued an independent report stating that each year, environmental damage in the country cost approximately 10% of GDP.
China Daily reported that the Ministry of Environmental Protection valued the cost of pollution to the economy at 1.4 trillion yuan in 2009. Starting in 1998, the NBS developed rudimentary environmental accounts in forestry and energy. Since then, the NBS has expanded its environmental accounts to include pollution treatment, water, and minerals, along with the development of a comprehensive SEEA for China. Eurostat is also constructing environmental accounts expressed in physical and monetary terms, and asset accounts, as a step towards developing a regional SEEA. The creation of inclusive wealth indicators is also a recognized priority of the EU. The proposed 7th Environment Action Programme (EAP) of the EC explicitly identifies this issue, by calling for further development and integration of economic and environmental indicators. The Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) proposes to streamline the collection of data required for designing environmental indicators. The EC Communication Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe sets 2020 as the year by which businesses, along with public authorities, will properly account for natural capital and ecosystem services.
France The French Ministry of Sustainable Development produces satellite, environmental-economic accounts each year. However, it is planning on fully expanding the accounts to correspond with the SEEA (2012). While no adjusted macroeconomic aggregates are estimated in the GEEA, two of the GEEA indicators are embedded into the National Accounts: productivity of energy and raw materials, and transport intensity and share of the railways in providing transport. It plans to adjust GDP to account for environmental costs and impacts by 2015. The Green Accounting for Indian States Project (GAISP) was the first initiative of the Green Indian States Trust (GIST), an NGO started in 2004. The Project used data from Indian national databases to measure sustainable development and create green accounts at the state-level that were consistent with SEEA-2003 guidelines. Both are networks that conduct research on and analyses of environmental accounting, which is instructive for teachers, researchers and members of the policy community.
Indonesia Members of the
World Resources Institute, led by David Repetto, integrated environmental effects into Indonesia's national accounts in 1990. He subtracted net natural resource depreciation for the petroleum, timber, and soils sectors from GDP to estimate the environmentally-adjusted NDP. In their study, the UNU-IAS constructed an international environmental input-output model for the Asia Pacific region, and from this, was able to compile a preliminary SEEA and Green GDP approximation. In 1999, Silvia Teizzi at the University of Sienna applied a method of monetary valuation to externalities arising from agricultural production in Italy. She separately estimated a shadow price and a quantity for the externalities and calculated their values between for each year between 1961 and 1991. Under the local Agenda 21 process, the City and Local Environmental Accounting and Reporting (CLEAR) project and the CONTAROMA project were undertaken by Italian municipalities. They are based on data compiled by 10 government ministries, and describe the environmental burden of particular natural resources in physical units. It began developing a SEEA (KORSEEA) in 2002, and the development of Economy-wide Material Flow Accounts, and NAMEA took place in the following years. Environmental adjustment in this study is limited to the subtraction of "degradation costs of natural resources" from NDP. The Mexican System of Economic and Ecological Accounts (MSEEA) was started in 1988, and has been published annually since 1991. After 2015, the basis for integration will appear with the creation of input-output tables.
United States In 1992, the
Bureau of Economic Analysis within the Department of Commerce began intensively developing environmental accounting methodologies. However, Congress directed the department to suspend all activities in this area in 1994, after the first U.S. Integrated Environmental and Economic Satellite Accounts were published. The largest externalities, for which damages range from 0.8 to 5.6 times value added, arise from coal-fired electric generation. == See also ==