Narrow Results

Recent years have seen attempts to design and implement environmental accounts for a number of countries, in response to perceived inadequacies in the existing national income accounts. This has led to much discussion of the feasibility and desirability of different approaches. This paper discusses three key issues: what use is envisaged for environmental accounts? What type of development are they intended to promote? And what view of consumption do they incorporate? The paper concludes that there is a strong case for developing environmental accounts in physical units as a tool of analysis, but that the case for developing accounts in money terms, on the other hand, largely with the aim of arriving at a "Green National Income", is quite weak. If the objective is to monitor progress towards sustainable welfare, the development of a set of social and environmental indicators would be preferable.