Environmental Accounting

With the intention of placing environmental problems into a framework that key economic ministries in any government will understand, the World Bank is currently focusing on a series of initiatives that build on economic theory to measure environmental benefits in monetary terms.

• Economic policy can be regarded as a process of portfolio management in which the assets to be managed are produced capital, natural capital and human resources. Estimates of wealth and its components are available for nearly 120 countries.

• Building on the same concept as the NNP, adjusted net saving measure the true rate of savings in an economy after taking into account investment in human capital, depletion of natural resources and damage caused by pollution. ANS time series can be downloaded for 140 countries.