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A Stock-Take of Green National Accounting Initiatives

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Abstract

Green national accounting has existed in a variety of forms for just over thirty years. Having essentially begun as environmental cost adjustments to Gross Domestic Product, green national accounting now includes such indicators as the Genuine Progress Indicator, Genuine Savings, and the Ecological Footprint. This paper serves as an overview or stock-take of green national accounting initiatives and as a means of assessing the major developments since the early 1970s. It is concluded that a suite of indicators is required to convey a complete picture of a nation’s sustainable development performance. In addition, economic indicators need to be supplemented by biophysical indicators, although the latter should never be incorporated directly into national income accounts since they serve as indicators of ecological sustainability, not of economic performance. Finally, the fact that a number of recently established indicators are still in the embryonic stage of development means that considerable refinement is necessary before they are likely to be broadly accepted by the policy-making community.

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  1. Faculty of Social Sciences, Flinders University , G.P.O. Box 2100, 5001, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Philip Lawn

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Lawn, P. A Stock-Take of Green National Accounting Initiatives. Soc Indic Res 80, 427–460 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-006-0003-1

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