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3.3
STRENGTHENING INDICATORS AND ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS FOR NATURAL CAPITAL
‘GREENING’ OUR MACRO-ECONOMIC
AND SOCIETAL INDICATORS
“Choices between promoting GDP
and protecting the environment may
be false choices, once environmental
degradation is appropriately included
in our measurement of economic
performance.”
Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report on the Measurement
of Economic Performance and Social Progress, 2009.
3.3.1 TRADITIONAL APPROACHES
TO MEASURING WEALTH AND
WELL-BEING
A range of ‘traditional’ indicators are used to measure
countries’ economic performance and in policy making,
These include: GDP and GDP growth, national income,
final consumption, gross fixed capital formation (GFCF),
net savings, international trade balance, international
balance of payments, inflation, national debt, savings
rates and so on. On the social side, some of the indicators
most commonly used relate to unemployment,
literacy, life expectancy and income inequality. A useful
combined indicator that straddles more than one
domain is the human development index (HDI).
These conventional aggregates feed into and are an
integral part of national accounting systems (see 3.4
below). However, they only tell part of the story as they
do not systematically cover the loss of biodiversity.
Indicators for biodiversity and ecosystem services are already
a step in the right direction towards complementing
them. As section 3.2 showed, we now have a swathe of
environmental indicators, from water quality to more
recent measurements of CO 2 emissions. Many argue that
there are in fact too many separate tools to have
anywhere near as much public, press and political attention
as the consolidated traditional economic indicators.
CO 2 is starting to be an exception, but while helpful,
does not address ecosystems and biodiversity directly.
We can illustrate the slow process of change
through the example of trade deficits e.g. where
imports exceed exports. These feature every week in
many newspapers or magazines yet there is little
mention of green trade deficits i.e. the impacts on biodiversity
related to imports and exports of goods and
services. The tool of ecological footprint analysis (see
Box 3.4 above) can help to fill this gap by helping to
identify creditor and debtor nations from a biodiversity
perspective. ‘Water footprints’ can also offer
useful information to consumers – to put it simply,
when bananas are imported, so are the water and
the nutrients from the soil.
Certain countries – notably the most developed countries
– are significant environmental debtor nations.
Most developing countries are creditor countries.
However, there is little reflection of this debt or credit
in traditional measurement and decision making or in
market signals. Some countries have responded to
the understanding that a continued growth in their footprints
cannot go on for ever and are using the footprint
as a policy target to reduce their environmental
impacts or increase resource efficiency (see Box 3.4).
The next section shows how traditional approaches
can be gradually adapted to support more sustainable
measurement.
3.3.2 TOOLS FOR MORE
SUSTAINABLE MEASUREMENT
Part of the solution is understanding that for many of the
economic terms used in everyday policy making, there
are already parallels that take nature into account.
Economic assets – natural assets. The concept of
capital derives from economics: capital stocks (assets)
provide a flow of goods and services which contributes
TEEB FOR NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL POLICY MAKERS - CHAPTER 3: PAGE 23