NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
The overview section of this report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by a Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.
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COMMISSION ON GEOSCIENCES, ENVIRONMENT, AND RESOURCES
M. GORDON WOLMAN, Chair,
The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
PATRICK R. ATKINS,
Aluminum Company of America, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
EDITH BROWN WEISS,
Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.
JAMES P. BRUCE,
Canadian Climate Program Board, Ottawa, Ontario
WILLIAM L. FISHER,
University of Texas, Austin
EDWARD A. FRIEMAN,
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California
GEORGE M. HORNBERGER,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville
W. BARCLAY KAMB,
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
PERRY L. McCARTY,
Stanford University, California
S. GEORGE PHILANDER,
Princeton University, New Jersey
RAYMOND A. PRICE,
Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada
THOMAS A. SCHELLING,
University of Maryland, College Park
ELLEN SILBERGELD,
Environmental Defense Fund, Washington, D.C.
STEVEN M. STANLEY,
The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
VICTORIA J. TSCHINKEL,
Landers and Parsons, Tallahassee, Florida
Staff
STEPHEN RATTIEN, Executive Director
STEPHEN D. PARKER, Associate Executive Director
MORGAN GOPNIK, Assistant Executive Director
JEANETTE SPOON, Administrative Officer
SANDI FITZPATRICK, Administrative Associate
ROBIN ALLEN, Senior Project Assistant
COMMISSION ON BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES AND EDUCATION
JOHN A. SWETS, Chair,
Bolt Beranek & Newman, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts
ALFRED BLUMSTEIN,
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
ANN L. BROWN,
University of California, Berkeley
KAREN DAVIS,
The Commonwealth Fund, New York, New York
RICHARD ELMORE,
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
BARUCH FISCHHOFF,
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
JAMES GREENO,
Stanford University, California
ROBERT M. HAUSER,
University of Wisconsin, Madison
PATRICIA KING,
Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.
CHARLES MANSKI,
University of Wisconsin, Madison
DANIEL McFADDEN,
University of California, Berkeley
DAVID MECHANIC,
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
JANE A. MENKEN,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
WILLIAM A. MORRILL,
MATHTECH, Inc., Princeton, New Jersey
W. RICHARD SCOTT,
Stanford University, California
CHRISTOPHER A. SIMS,
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
RICHARD F. THOMPSON,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles
WILLIAM J. WILSON,
University of Chicago, Illinois
DAVID A. WISE,
Harvard University and National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Staff
BARBARA BOYLE TORREY, Executive Director
EUGENIA GROHMAN, Associate Director for Reports
CHRISTINE L. MCSHANE, Editor
PAULA J. MELVILLE, Administrative Associate
ANN G. POLVINALE, Administrative Officer
Preface
On July 1-3, 1993, the National Research Council's (NRC's) Commission on Geosciences, Environment, and Resources (CGER) and Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (CBASSE) convened a retreat at the J. Erik Jonsson Study Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This workshop on "Valuing Natural Capital in Planning for Sustainable Development" investigated the prospects for, and problems of, incorporating natural resource and environmental assets into economic frameworks, particularly into the national income accounts (such as gross national product or gross domestic product). Within this context, the specific goals of the workshop were to identify crucial technical and conceptual issues, uncover points of consensus and controversy, chart directions for future research and action, and select areas for high priority attention.
The workshop assembled individuals with a wide spectrum of views on environmental, scientific, public policy, and economic issues (see Appendix). Attendees included prominent researchers in environmental and natural resource economics, behavioral, social, and decision sciences, and biologic and earth sciences. Commissioned papers and background articles were distributed in advance to the workshop participants. Together with the presentations, these materials were designed to establish a common basic level of understanding. On this basis, the workshop organizers hoped to increase the sensitivity of different disciplines to the concerns and perspectives of those in other fields, foster common understanding, and summarize some of the major issues of environmental accounting for scholars and policymakers unfamiliar with the debate. At the workshop, basic theoretical issues including the implications of the different concepts of "sustainability" were outlined, work in progress that applied economic techniques to valuing natural resources was presented, and procedures for representing environmental and natural resource issues in an economic framework were suggested. There was considerable disagreement about the definitions and implications of many of the concepts discussed, and no consensus emerged as to immediate remedies for the perceived weaknesses in the present system of accounting.
One major theme dominates this volume: the rationale for, and the problems faced in expanding conventional measures of economic activity to encompass changes in natural capital—that is, in the stock of renewable and nonrenewable natural resources and in the quality of the environment. Short-hand and somewhat casual references to such conceptual and staffs
tical reform ideas have sometimes employed the term "greening the GDP." Without wishing to be pedantic, we have chosen to avoid the "green" characterization. For one thing, the word suggests only the environmental part of our dichotomous concern. (Depletion of, say, copper ore is not viewed as primarily an environmental issue.) Moreover, in a number of countries, "green" frequently describes political institutions or platforms that go beyond both environmental and natural resource problems. In this overview, we therefore adopt the term ''natural resource and environmental accounting'' when discussing the problem of integrating these two elements into the prevailing system of economic measurement.
Secretary of the Smithsonian Robert McC. Adams chaired the workshop and was a speaker. Nobelist Robert Solow delivered the keynote address. Other speakers included Peter Bartelmus, Norman Bradburn, Carol Carson, Paul Craig, Pierre Crosson, Eric Fischer, Baruch Fischhoff, Thomas Lovejoy, Mohan Munasinghe, Henry Peskin, Francis Pierce, Raymond Prince, Claudia Sadoff, David Simpson, and Brian Skinner. M. Gordon Wolman delivered the closing remarks. The workshop sessions and panels were chaired by Robert McC. Adams, Edith Brown Weiss, Joel Darmstadter, Helen Ingram, and William Morrill.
The planning group that organized the workshop was chaired by Joel Darmstadter. It included Edith Brown Weiss, Pierre Crosson, Ernst Lutz, Mohan Munasinghe, Raymond Prince, Stephen Rattien, Craig Schiffries, Miron Straf, Michael Toman, E-an Zen, and M. Gordon Wolman.
This volume includes both an overview of major issues in valuing natural capital and more technical background papers contributed by individual authors. The material presented reflects the wide variety of views and opinions expressed, at times contentiously, by those participating in the event. The overview section draws on the proceedings of the retreat, on the background papers, and on selected scholarly literature listed in the bibliography. It attempts to show the reader the lay of the land without claiming to have discovered a road map for traversing it.
The CGER and the CBASSE gratefully acknowledge the generous contributions of time and expertise by the retreat participants. Special thanks are extended to those who made formal presentations and acted as session chairs, to Alice Killian who served as reporter at the workshop and drafted the overview section with oversight from the committee, and to Morgan Gopnik and Angela Brubaker who produced this volume. It is hoped that the material presented here will help to stimulate new ideas, research, and policy formulation, and perhaps encourage further inquiry into such issues by units of the NRC.
M. Gordon Wolman, Chair
Commission on Geosciences, Environment and Resources
Robert McC. Adams, Chair, 1990-1993
Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education
Sustainable Resource Accounting |
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Transfer Models for "Green Accounting": An Approach to Environmental Policy Analysis for Sustainable Development |
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Natural Resource and Environmental Accounting in U.S. Agriculture |
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Natural Resource Accounting for the Forestry Sector: Valuation Techniques and Policy Implications in Thailand |
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Soil Quality in Relation to Value and Sustainable Management |
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Valuing Biodiversity: An Application of "Green Accounting" |
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