外文原文：环境会计.doc

1、Environmental AccountingWhere We Are Now, Where We Are HeadingBy Joy E. HechtInterest is growing in modifying national income accounting systems to promote understanding of the links between economy and environment.The field of environmental accounting has made great strides in the past two decades,

2、 moving from a rather arcane endeavor to one tested in dozens of countries and well established in a few. But the idea that nations might integrate the economic role of the environment into their income accounts is neither a quick sell nor a quick process; it has been under discussion since the 1960

3、s. Despite controversies described in this article, however, interest is growing in modifying national income accounting systems to promote understanding of the links between economy and environment.Why Change?Governments around the world develop economic data systems known as national income accoun

4、ts to calculate macroeconomic indicators such as gross domestic product. Building a nations economic use of the environment into such accounts is a response to several perceived flaws in the System of National as defined by the United Nations and used internationally. One flaw in the SNA often cited

5、 is that the cost of environmental protection cannot be identified. Consequently, money spent, say, to put pollution control devices on smokestacks increases GDP, even though the expenditure is not economically productive, some argue. These critics call for differentiating “defensive” expenditures f

6、rom others within the accounts.Also misleading is the fact that some environmental goods are not marketed though they provide economic value. Fuelwood gathered in forests, meat and fish gathered for consumption, and medicinal plants are examples. So are drinking and irrigation water, whose sale pric

7、es reflect the cost of distribution and treatment infrastructure, but not the water itself. While some countries do include such goods in their national income accounts, no standard practices exist for doing so. When nonmarketed goods are included in the accounts, they still cannot be distinguished

8、from those that are marketed.Valuing environmental services such as the watershed protection that forests afford and the crop fertilization that insects provide is difficult. Though some experts call for their inclusion in environmentally adjusted accounts, typically neither the economic value nor t

9、he degradation of these services is included. On the other hand, however, the alternate goods and services needed to replace them-water treatment plants, for exampledo contribute to GDP, which can be rather misleading.Still another problem is that national income accounts treat the depreciation of m

10、anufactured capital and natural capital differently. Physical capitala building or a machine, for instanceis depreciated in accordance with conventional business accounting principles, while all consumption of natural capital is accounted for as income. Thus the accounts of a country that harvests i

11、ts forests unsustainably will show high income for a few years, but will not reflect the destruction of the productive forest asset. While opinions vary on how to depreciate natural capital, they converge on the need to do so.Which Indicators Are Useful? Some proponents advocate simple “flag” indica

12、tors to alert policymakers to the broad role of the environment in the economy, for example, comparing conventional GDP with environmentally adjusted GDP, or conventional savings with so-called “genuine” savings that account for environmental factors. Both of these indicators can provide valuable wa

13、rnings of the impacts of environmental degradation on an economy. However, such flags are less useful in determining the source of environmental harm or identifying a policy response. For this reason, many economists place primary importance not on the bottom line, but on the underlying data used to

14、 build environmental accounts. These data can help answer such questions as how natural catastrophes like the fires that raged in Indonesia in the summer of 1998 may affect economic growth, or how environmental protection policies such as green taxes may affect the economy.Who Is Doing This? Environ

15、mental accounting is underway in several dozen countries, where bureaucrats, statisticians, and other proponents both foreign and domestic have initiated activities over the past few decades. Several countries have made continuous investments in data systems, which are integrated into existing stati

16、stical systems and economic planning activities. Others have made more limited efforts to calculate a few indicators, or analyze a single sector. Some of the earliest research on environmental accounting was done at RFF by Henry Peskin, working on the design of accounts for the United States.One of the first countries to build environmental accounts is Norway, which began collecting data on energy sources, fisheries, forests, and minerals in the 1970s to address r