Environmental–Economic Accounting: Progress and Digression in the SEEA Revisions

The 1992 Earth Summit and its message of sustainable development drove the launching of a System for integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting, the SEEA. Since then, sustainable development and the SEEA have given way to green growth and green economy indicators in the latest 2012 Summit. A lengthy revision process has now produced a curtailed “SEEA central framework.” The new framework focuses on expenditures for environmental protection and resource management, and stocks and flows of “economic” resources; both are covered by the conventional national accounts. Environmental degradation, notably from pollution, is left to “experimental” ecosystem accounts. Further revision of the SEEA should reverse this retrenchment from integrative environmental–economic accounting. A comprehensive satellite system, rather than a limited statistical standard, might put the SEEA back on the policy agenda.     

Accounting for Environmental Services: Contrasting the SEEA and the ENRAP Approaches

Both the System of Integrated Environment and Economic Accounting (SEEA) and the Environmental and Natural Resources Accounting Project (ENRAP) are efforts to expand conventional national economic accounts in order to better reflect interactions between the market economy and the natural environment. In order to maintain a close relationship to the System of National Accounts (SNA) accounting standards, SEEA adopts conventional definitions of productive sectors. However, SEEA fails to account for many valuable services of the natural environment and encourages the use of techniques that provide misleading and poor estimates of depreciation and damage to the environment. ENRAP addresses these deficiencies by explicitly recognizing that the natural environment is a productive economic sector. ENRAP encourages the use of imputation approaches that draw on techniques common in the environmental economics literature. These approaches are consistent with definitions of depreciation and environmental damage widely accepted in economic theory. The principles that underlie the ENRAP approach provide a basis for contrasting ENRAP and SEEA empirically. Using Philippine data, SEEA-type estimates are compared with those of ENRAP.     

Economic instruments and the environmental accounts

The Nordic countries have now had experience with environmental taxes and subsidies as a major component of their environmental policy over an extensive period of time. The Swedish System of Environmental and Economic Accounts (SEEA) include environmental taxes and subsidies as part of the official statistics. This article presents the accounts for taxes and subsidies, linked to the accounts for emissions data by industry. It demonstrates disparities between emissions and environmental taxes, as well as where industries or environmental problems are not regulated. The data show that in Sweden economic instruments are always aimed at particular actors or areas, and are never quite as comprehensive as recommended by economic theory. The environmental taxes are primarily aimed at fossil fuel use and related emissions, and have been mostly applied to the household sector and services sector, while industry often has been given exemptions due to concerns about international competition. The environmentally motivated subsidies are mainly directed to agriculture, fishing and research on renewable resources. A fully developed international data set on taxes and subsidies would provide a sound base for comparing the impact on international competitiveness. Eurostat is promoting the use of environmental accounts data for its member countries by harmonizing methods and engaging in publication of international comparisons.     

ENRAP与SEEA体系中环境服务核算的比较分析

ENRAP和SEEA都设法扩展传统国民经济核算的范围,以更好地反映经济和自然环境的交互影响.ENRAP明确把自然环境作为一个生产性经济部门,采用大量虚拟技术测算环境服务的价值;SEEA采用SNA的生产部门定义与核算准则,但忽略了对许多有价值的自然环境服务的核算.这两大核算体系在环境服务核算的内容、核算方法和核算的结果等方面存在差异.     

The US Current Account, New Economy Services, and Implications for Sustainability

The paper considers the implications for sustainability of the US current account of widespread uptake of New Economy services around the world. The main contribution is to estimate new income elasticities for international trade in New Economy services and incorporate these in a simple model of the current accounts. Widespread uptake of New Economy services around the world improves the potential for a sustainable US external balance through two channels. First, uptake of New Economy services raises global growth. Second, it narrows the asymmetry in income elasticity of US trade. But, reasonable estimates of these two structural improvements are not sufficient to stabilize the US current account deficit.     

Ecological-economic viability as a criterion of strong sustainability under uncertainty

Strong sustainability, according to the common definition, requires that different natural and economic capital stocks be maintained as physical quantities separately. Yet, in a world of uncertainty this cannot be guaranteed. To therefore define strong sustainability under uncertainty in an operational manner we propose to use the concept of viability. Viability means that the different components and functions of a dynamic, stochastic system at any time remain in a domain where the future existence of these components and functions is guaranteed with sufficiently high probability. We develop a unifying and general ecological-economic concept of viability that encompasses the traditional ecological and economic notions of viability as special cases. It provides an operational criterion of strong sustainability under a mild form of uncertainty and for medium spatial and temporal scales. We illustrate this concept and demonstrate its usefulness by applying it to livestock grazing management in semi-arid rangelands.     

Wealth,Natural Capital,and Sustainable Development: Contrasting Examples from Botswana and Namibia

Theoretical work has demonstrated that sustainable development requires non-declining per capita wealth, where wealth is defined to include produced, natural, human and social capital. Several studies have attempted to measure total national wealth or changes in wealth, but have been seriously hampered by a lack of data, especially for natural and human capital. To address this problem, the UN and other international statistical agencies developed a standardized framework for environmental accounts, the System of integrated Environmental and Economic Accounts (SEEA). Using the newly available asset accounts for natural capital, national wealth accounts are constructed and used to assess the contrasting development paths of Botswana and Namibia. Botswana, with an explicit policy of reinvestment of resource rents, has roughly tripled per capita wealth and national income over the past two decades. Namibia, with no explicit policy to use natural capita to build wealth, has seen per capita wealth and income decline.     

略论中国主权财富基金的战略选择

中国具有强大的外汇储备支持,人民币国际化趋势显著,加之中国对碳金融发展的重视,中国主权财富基金面临的发展机遇优势明显。在全球产业转移活跃、世界经济政治格局多极化趋势明显的状况下,中国主权财富基金投资战略应向以下三方面发展,即环境、资源、人力配备,其中环境是投资战略的基础,资源是投资战略的核心,人力配备是投资战略可持续的保障。     

Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting: An Application to the Forest Resources in India

Forests contribute to the economy in several ways. While forests are a source of timber with market values, they also influence local and regional climate, preserve soil cover on site, and in the case of watersheds, protect soil downstream from floods –functions, which are not in the production boundary of SNA. Further, the net value added in forestry sector does not reflect sustainability of forest resources, because it ignores the consumption of natural capital (depletion) that occurs when forests are harvested or converted to other uses. The only costs of depletion considered in the national accounts are the extraction costs and records the potential loss in forest wealth as other changes in assets that have no effect on Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The study tries to incorporate forest resources into the national accounts and adjust the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the depletion of forest capital, using the Satellite System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA). The value of net accumulation (positive or negative) of forests is calculated and the net Domestic Product is adjusted for the depletion of the forest resources to get Environment adjusted Domestic Product (EDP). The results show that the EDP equals 98.4% of the adjusted net domestic product in 1993–1994. A proper accounting framework would better reflect not only the long term value of the state's natural wealth but also its immediate contribution to the state economy in the current accounts.     

后危机时期国际金融格局的变动及其对美国经济的影响

2008年金融危机给世界经济带来了重大的影响,国际金融格局也发生了显著变化。本文主要分析了国际汇率体系、国际收支和国际储备体系、国别经济政策与国际间经济政策协调的变化。在后危机时期,美国经济也受国际金融格局变化的影响,包括美元中心地位的问题、“中心一外围”模式可持续性的问题和美国的国际经济领导权问题。本文得出的主要结论是：国际几种主要货币汇率波动增大,国际汇率体系弹性增大,国际收支总体失衡程度下降,美元为主的国际储备体系呈多元化趋势,先进经济体与新兴发展经济体的经济协调在加强,美元的霸权地位面临挑战,美国在国际分工中的中心地位在下降,美国在国际经济的主导地位也在逐渐下降,新兴经济体获得更多的话语权。     

论经济全球化对世界民主化进程的推动作用

20世纪90年代以来,经济全球化进程不断加快,世界各国各地区之间的经济联系更加密切,世界各国日益强调平等互利原则,相互竞争的同时注重协调与合作,多元化、宽容、妥协与合作,成为各国经济国际化进程中的基本共识。经济全球化发展,还使更多国家选择了市场经济体制。各国市场经济体制的建立与发展,使得推动民主化进程的民主力量不断发展壮大。作为世界民主化进程的基本内容,民主的制度化与权力运作的法制化,相应地也得到各国普遍认同,在实践当中进一步丰富和发展。     

Valuing Publicly Provided Services

Decisions about expenditure on health, education and other publicly provided services require choices regarding how much of our collective income we should allocate to these services and which services should be given priority. The attempt to answer this question has stimulated many developments in economic theory and practice, from human capital theory to systems of extended national accounts. This paper is a brief survey of some of the most important ideas, with reference to their implications for Australian public policy.     

Measuring the financial sustainability and its influential factors in local governments

The economic crisis has led international organizations and previous research to point out the need for measuring and controlling financial sustainability in governments. Based on the main international pronouncements, this article seeks to contribute to the measurement and management of the financial sustainability, analysing the income statement evolution and identifying its influential factors. An empirical study of Spanish municipalities is then undertaken to test the relationship between the measure of the financial sustainability and three dimensions proposed by International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) (revenues, debt and services). Our findings indicate that the income statement is a good approach for the financial sustainability assessment, because it reveals relevant information about its three dimensions, allowing to identify the specific factors which could provoke sustainability problems on public services.     

INTEGRATED ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC ACCOUNTING: FRAMEWORK FOR A SNA SATELLITE SYSTEM

National accounts have provided the most widely used indicators for the assessment of economic performance, trends of economic growth and of the economic counterpart of social welfare. However, two major drawbacks of national accounting have raised doubts about the usefulness of national accounts data for the measurement of long-term sustainable economic growth and socio-economic development. These drawbacks are the neglect of (a) scarcities of natural resources which threaten the sustained productivity of the economy and (b) the degradation of environmental quality from pollution and its effects on human health and welfare. In the present paper, the authors attempt to reflect environmental concerns in an accounting framework which maintains as far as possible SNA concepts and principles. To this end, the accounting framework is used to develop a "SNA Satellite System for Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting" (SEEA). Environmental costs of economic activities, natural asset accounts and expenditures for environmental protection and enhancement, are presented in flow accounts and balance sheets in a consistent manner, i.e. maintaining the accounting identities of SNA. Such accounting permits the definition and compilation of modified indicators of income and expenditure, product, capital and value added, allowing for the depletion of natural resources, the degradation of environmental quality and social response to these effects. A desk study of a selected country is used to clarify the proposed approaches, to demonstrate their application in future country studies and to illustrate the quantitative effects of the use of modified concepts on the results of analysis.     

PFA中残余物项的剖析

环境经济综合核算体系的实物流量账户是一个远未成熟的核算系统,通过对影响实物流量账户(PFA)的因素分析,我们发现,现有的账户还不尽完善,需要做进一步补充。为此,本着SEEA核算科学性和可操作性原则,在原有的PFA框架内,本文做了一些有益的补充,以期望对PFA起到一个推进的作用。     

Development of the SEEA 2003 and its implementation

The preparation of the System of Environmental and Economic Accounts 2003 marks an important milestone in the world of official statistics. Just as the development of the original guidelines for national accounting in the 1950s was the first step toward today's robust, internationally comparable economic statistics, the System of Environmental and Economic Accounts 2003 offers hope to bring order and comparability to environmental statistics. How the system came to be and why it is an important achievement are outlined. This is followed by an overview of its accounting structure. A discussion of the implementation of the SEEA 2003, both in ideal terms and as actually practiced in statistical offices, concludes.     

Natural resources, capital accumulation and the resource curse

Early concern by economists for the effect of natural capital on economic growth gave way to complacency and neglect during the nineteenth century. Evidence has emerged, however, that since the 1960s the economic performance of low-income countries has been inversely related to their natural resource wealth. This relationship is not a deterministic one so policy counts. SEEA can help improve the policy and performance of resource-abundant low-income countries by reinforcing the rationale for the sound management of natural resources and also by providing an index of policy sustainability in the form of the net saving rate. This policy index, along with other measures such as a capital fund for sterilizing the rent, initiatives to increase the transparency of rent flows and the rigorous evaluation of alternative uses of additional public sector revenue can improve the efficiency by which natural resource rent is transformed into alternative forms of capital to sustain rising social welfare. Chad and Mauritania provide case studies to illustrate how SEEA and net saving can be used to diagnose policy failure and improve economic performance.     

世界城市会展业发展的借鉴作用研究

北京在2009年12月提出了建设世界城市的总体规划.北京世界城市建设依赖于第三产业的发展,依赖于高端服务业的发展,会展业是其中一种重要的业态.“世界城市”是指国际大都市的高端形态,它对全球的政治、经济、文化等方面有着重要的影响力.从巴黎、伦敦、纽约和东京等世界城市的会展业发展可以看出,会展业发展能极大的拉动经济,促进文化传播与国际经济合作,并迅速提升其经济服务化水平.借鉴这些世界城市的发展经验,北京应着力打造世界级文化主题活动,积极申办世界级会展活动,提升会展业的国际化程度,加强会展硬件配套,并提升服务软实力     

Ecosystem services and regional development: An application to Sweden

This study carries out interregional comparisons of development and sustainable use of natural capital with and without inclusion of non-marketed ecosystem services. A simple dynamic model of an open economy shows that appropriate adjustment of conventional income accounts includes flow and stock components, but excludes explicit entrance of pollution. Calculations are made for Swedish regions and for two types of ecosystem services — pollution sequestration and recreational services — provided by three types of ecosystems: forests, agricultural landscape and wetlands. When comparing the adjusted and non-adjusted regional income accounts it is shown that the two measurements generate significantly different pictures of regional income and growth; regions that are traditionally considered as relatively less growth promoting are shown to hold important sources of wealth from natural capital, while counties that are rich in conventional accounts fall behind when adjusting for values of changes in natural capital.