This book presents national environmental, or "green" accounting as it has developed in Europe and other parts of the world. It introduces the most recent methods developed through the United Nations Statistical Department and other international organizations, but bridges the gap between the superficial treatment of environmental accounting in economics textbooks and environmental literature, on the one hand, and the highly technical manuals of international organizations, on the other. Joy E. Hecht begins with a history and introduction to national income accounting. The first part of her book explains how the environmental accounts build on the structure of the 1993 System of National Accounts. She then shows the UN approach to accounting applied to pollution, recycling, and the management of natural resources such as forests, minerals, and fisheries. The third section discusses how the accounts approach green GDP and other macroeconomic indicators. The book concludes by going beyond the UN structures to discuss other adjusted macroeconomic measures and how accounting data can be used to build them. National Environmental Accounting is a nontechnical introduction to an increasingly important field. It is a mustread for anyone interested in how environmental accounts can help society move toward greater sustainability.
1 National environmental accounts 1
2 Concepts of conventional national income accounting 16
3 Structure of the conventional income accounts 33
4 Overview of the revised SEEA 53
5 Pollution accounting : the physical side 76
6 Pollution accounting : what are we spending now? 90
7 Pollution accounting : policy questions 102
8 Resource accounting 120
9 Forest accounts 136
10 Subsoil asset accounts 153
11 Fisheries, land, and water accounts 169
12 Macroeconomic indicators in the SEEA 196
13 Macroeconomic measures outside the SEEA 209