Revista Română de Statistică (Jun 2010)
“BEYOND THE GDP” - THROUGH THE ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTS
Abstract
In order to build a sustainable economic society with a lowenvironmental impact, the private sector and the general government must identify and implement active or voluntary tools capable of influencing the carrying out of the socio-economic activities as to ensure their sustainability. These topics were subject to the high level Conference “Beyond the GDP”, jointly organised by the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Club of Rome, UNECE and OECD in November 2007. The Conference has statuated certain road maps in view to build up the statistical tools that are necessary in order to obtain the integrated “economy – environment” indicators.At the same time, a strong support of decision-makers, of the experts and of the civil society for their implementation has been proven.The same objectives are envisaged by the Stiglitz Commission,established upon the request of Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, in view to identify new tools necessary for the production of complementary information which, together with the GDP, could more pertinently characterise the social progress.Due to these tools the decision-makers in the general government andbusinesses get useful information based on which they are able to measure, analyse and highlight the costs related to the economic activities meant to promote the environmental conservation and the quantitative effects (expressed in monetary or physical units) in the context of the sustainable development requirements.The transposition of such mechanisms into an information systemrepresents the basis of environmental accountancy.The environmental accounts provide data highlighting the maincontribution of natural resources to the economic development, the wellbeing and the pollution or resource degradation-related costs. It can be said that the environmental accountancy achieves the measurement of the economic efficiency of the environmental conservation activities as part of the environmental performance index and of the environmental efficiency of the companies economic activities as part of the financial performances associated to the environmental measures.Why such an approach?At present, many aspects of welfare can no longer be quantified solely through the GDP, and though a correlation between the GDP and welfare exists, this indicator, in its current format, is not able to express the real content of welfare which, besides the close relation with the economic growth has multiple linkages with the consumption level, the environmental situation, etc.The need for improving the data and indicators completing the GDP,in view to express the progress recorded in all the fields that is contributing to welfare (health, environment protection, production and consumption patterns, etc.) is an imperative. In brief, an accountancy framework is necessary, allowing for the integration of environmental issues with the economic ones.
