PM wants proper system for computing green GDP

NEW DELHI: Concerned over the growing alarm over global warming, the Prime Minister���s Office (PMO) has asked the ministry of statistics & programme implementation (MoSPI) to work out a system for computing the country���s green GDP. Value of the resources degraded or polluted in the process of economic expansion will be used as a deflator on the real GDP to arrive at the country���s green GDP.

India���s green GDP would be significantly lower than its real GDP since economic growth here is resource-intensive.

According to officials in the MoSPI, the ministry has also been asked to speed up work on the national database of natural resource accounting, the primary requirement for calculating green GDP. The green GDP numbers might form a part of prime minister���s national plan on climate change, which seeks to promote sustainable development. Environmental economists had earlier pointed out knowing the green GDP is essential since industrial growth depleting natural resources is not desirable. India is yet to start data collection in several states through statistical accounting of pollution of natural resource like air, water and land. Various research outfits from different states are already working on collecting the environmental statistics. Once the national database of natural resource accounting is in place, steps will have to be taken to calculate the cost of recovery of polluted resources.

Once a model for determining a resource is established, environmental economics of all natural resources will be derived for each state. India is following a general framework of integration of environmental and economic accounting ������ introduced by the United Nations five years back ������ that can be used for macro planning. For guiding sustainable models, the United Nations had presented a general framework of integration of environmental and economic accounting in 2003.