Tài liệu ACCOUNTING FOR RENEWABLE AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES docx

26     March 2000

Accounting for Renewable

and Environmental Resources

 , a blue ribbon panel of the National Academy of

Sciences’ National Research Council completed a congression￾ally mandated review of the work that the Bureau of Economic

Analysis (BEA) had published on integrated economic and en￾vironmental accounts. The panel’s final report commended

BEA for its initial work in producing a set of sound and ob￾jective prototype accounts. The November 1999 issue of the

SURVEY OF CURRENT BUSINESS contained an article by William

D. Nordhaus, the Chair of the Panel, that presented an overview

of the major issues and findings and a reprint of chapter 5,

“Overall Appraisal of Environmental Accounting in the United

States.” Chapter 3, “Accounting for Subsoil Mineral Resources”

was reprinted in the February 2000 issue; chapter 4, “Accounting

for Renewable and Environmental Resources” is reprinted below.

This article is reprinted with permission from Nature’s Num￾bers: Expanding the National Economic Accounts to Include

the Environment. Copyright of the National Academy Press,

Washington DC. This is a report of the National Research Coun￾cil, prepared by the Panel on Integrated Environmental and

Economic Accounting and edited by William D. Nordhaus and

Edward C. Kokkenlenberg.

T   chapter reviewed issues involved

in extending the national accounts to include

subsoil assets. This chapter focuses on two other

aspects of environmental accounting: renewable

and environmental resources. BEA has proposed

covering these two categories of resources in fu￾ture work on integrated accounting. As discussed

in Chapter 1, Phase II of that work would focus

on different classes of land (e.g., agriculture, for￾est, and recreation land), on timber, on fisheries,

and on agricultural assets such as grain stocks and

livestock. Phase III would address environmental

resources, including, for example, air, uncultivated

biological resources, and water.

The general principles set forth in Chapter 2 in￾dicate that increasingly severe obstacles are likely

to arise as the national accounts move further from

the boundaries of the market economy. The dis￾cussion in this chapter confirms the premise that

BEA’s Phase III raises the most difficult concep￾tual, methodological, and data problems. This

finding presents a dilemma that must be faced in

expanding the accounts: Should follow-on efforts

focus on those resources that can be most eas￾ily included given existing data and methods, or

should BEA focus on including those resources that

would have the largest impact on our understand￾ing of the interaction between the U.S. economy

and the environment? The panel’s investigation,

while based on data that are highly imprecise and

in some cases speculative, suggests that the de￾velopment of the accounts proposed for Phase

III would be likely to encompass the most sig￾nificant economy-environment interactions. This

observation is tempered by the realization that to

date nothing approaching adequate comprehen￾sive environmental accounting for a country of the

complexity of the United States has yet been un￾dertaken. For BEA or the federal government to

prepare a full set of environmental accounts would

require a substantial commitment.

This chapter provides a review of the issues

involved in accounting for renewable and envi￾ronmental resources. It is not intended to be a

comprehensive review of work in this area. Rather,

it delineates the issues that are involved in envi￾ronmental accounting and presents two important

specific examples that illustrate these issues. The

first section reviews BEA’s efforts in environmental

accounting to date. Next, we analyze how stocks

and flows of residuals from human activities relate

to natural sources of residuals, natural resource

assets, stocks, flows, and economic activity. The

third section examines issues involved in account￾ing for renewable and environmental resources.

The chapter then turns to general issues associated

with the physical data requirements of environ￾mental accounting and with valuation. We next

investigate in greater detail the cases of forests and

air quality to illustrate how augmented accounting

might actually be done. The chapter ends with the

panel’s conclusions and recommendations in the

area of accounting for renewable and environmen￾tal resources. Appendix B identifies potentially

useful sources of data for developing supplemental

accounts identified by the panel in the course of its

investigation.

BEA EFFORTS TO DATE IN

ACCOUNTING FOR RENEWABLE AND

ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES

This section reviews BEA’s initial design for its

supplemental accounts for natural-resource and

    March 2000 • 27

environmental assets. A more complete evalua￾tion of BEA’s efforts on forests is included later

in the chapter. As discussed in Chapter 2, a

critical issue involved in the development of aug￾mented accounts is setting the boundary. How

far from the boundary of the marketplace should

TABLE 4–1 IEESA Asset Account, 1987

[Billions of dollars]

This table can serve as an inventory of the estimates available for the IEESA’s. In decreasing order of quality, the estimates that have been filled in are as follows: For made assets, estimates of reproduc￾ible tangible stock and inventories, from BEA’s national income and product accounts or based on them, and pollution abatement stock, from BEA estimates (rows 1–21); for subsoil assets, the highs

and lows of the range based on alternative valuation methods, from the companion article (rows 36–41); and best available, or rough-order-of-magnitude, estimates for some developed natural assets

(selected rows 23–35 and 42–47) and some environmental assets (selected rows 48–55) prepared by BEA. The ‘‘n.a.’’—not available—entries represent a research agenda.

Opening Stocks

Change

Total, Net

(3+4+5)

Depreciaton,

Depletion,

Degradation

Capital

Formation

Revaluation

and Other

Changes

Closing

Stocks

(1+2)

Row

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

PRODUCED ASSETS

Made assets ..................................................................................................................................... 1 11,565.9 667.4 –607.9 905.8 369.4 12,233.3

Fixed assets .................................................................................................................................. 2 10,535.2 608.2 –607.9 875.8 340.2 11,143.4

Residential structures ............................................................................................................... 3 4,001.6 318.1 –109.8 230.5 197.4 4,319.7

Fixed nonresidential structures and equipment ....................................................................... 4 6,533.6 290.1 –498.1 645.3 142.9 6,823.7

Natural resource related ....................................................................................................... 5 503.7 23.1 –19.2 30.3 12.0 526.8

Environmental management ............................................................................................ 6 241.3 8.4 –7.0 10.6 4.7 249.6

Conservation and development ................................................................................... 7 152.7 3.6 –4.4 5.3 2.7 156.4

Water supply facilities .................................................................................................. 8 88.5 4.8 –2.5 5.3 2.0 93.3

Pollution abatement ......................................................................................................... 9 262.4 14.7 –12.2 19.7 7.3 277.1

Sanitary services ......................................................................................................... 10 172.9 12.8 –5.6 13.7 4.8 185.8

Air pollution abatement and control ............................................................................ 11 45.3 .6 –4.1 3.5 1.3 45.9

Water pollution abatement and control ....................................................................... 12 44.2 1.3 –2.5 2.6 1.2 45.5

Other ................................................................................................................................. 13 6,029.9 267.0 –478.9 615.0 130.9 6,296.9

Inventories ..................................................................................................................................... 14 1,030.7 59.3 .......................... 30.1 29.2 1,090.0

Government ............................................................................................................................... 15 184.9 6.8 .......................... 2.9 3.8 191.7

Nonfarm ..................................................................................................................................... 16 797.3 62.4 .......................... 32.7 29.7 859.7

Farm (harvested crops, and livestock other than cattle and calves) ..................................... 17 48.5 –9.9 .......................... –5.5 –4.4 38.6

Corn ...................................................................................................................................... 18 10.2 .3 .......................... –1.1 1.4 10.5

Soybeans .............................................................................................................................. 19 5.0 –.1 .......................... –1.0 .9 4.9

All wheat ............................................................................................................................... 20 2.6 0.0 .......................... –.2 .2 2.6

Other ..................................................................................................................................... 21 30.7 –10.1 .......................... –3.2 –6.9 20.6

Developed natural assets ............................................................................................................... 22 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.

Cultivated biological resources ..................................................................................................... 23 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.

Cultivated fixed natural growth assets ..................................................................................... 24 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. Livestock for breeding, dairy, draught, etc .......................................................................... 25 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. Cattle ................................................................................................................................ 26 12.9 2.0 n.a. –.3 2.3 14.9

Fish stock ......................................................................................................................... 27 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.

Vineyards, orchards ......................................................................................................... 28 2.0 .2 n.a. 0.0 .2 2.2

Trees on timberland ......................................................................................................... 29 288.8 47.0 –6.9 9.0 44.9 335.7

Work-in-progress on natural growth products ..................................................................... 30 n.a. n.a. .......................... n.a. n.a. n.a. Livestock raised for slaughter ......................................................................................... 31 n.a. n.a. .......................... n.a. n.a. n.a. Cattle ............................................................................................................................ 32 24.1 7.5 .......................... 0.0 7.5 31.6

Fish stock ..................................................................................................................... 33 n.a. n.a. .......................... n.a. n.a. n.a.

Calves ............................................................................................................................... 34 5.0 .9 .......................... –.5 1.4 5.9

Crops and other produced plants, not yet harvested .................................................... 35 1.8 .3 .......................... .1 .2 2.1

Proved subsoil assets ................................................................................................................... 36 270.0 - 1,066.9 57.8 - 116.6 –16.7 - 61.6 16.6 - 64.6 58.0 - –119.6 299.4 - 950.3

Oil (including natural gas liquids) ............................................................................................. 37 58.2 - 325.9 –22.5 - 84.7 –5.1 - –30.6 5.8 - 34.2 –23.1 - –88.3 35.7 - 241.2

Gas (including natural gas liquids) .......................................................................................... 38 42.7 - 259.3 6.6 - 57.2 –5.6 - –20.3 4.1 - 14.9 8.1 - –51.8 49.4 - 202.2

Coal ........................................................................................................................................... 39 140.7 - 207.7 2.2 - 3.4 –5.4 - –7.6 4.4 - 6.3 3.2 - –2.1 143.0 - 204.2

Metals ........................................................................................................................................ 40 (*) - 215.3 67.2 - –29.5 –.2 - –2.2 2.2 - 9.2 65.2 - 22.5 38.5 - 244.8

Other minerals .......................................................................................................................... 41 28.4 - 58.7 4.3 - .8 –.4 - –.9 .1 - .0 4.6 - .1 32.8 - 57.9

Developed land ............................................................................................................................. 42 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.

Land underlying structures (private) ........................................................................................ 43 4,053.3 253.0 n.a. n.a. n.a. 4,306.3

Agricultural land (excluding vineyards, orchards) .................................................................... 44 441.3 42.4 n.a. –2.8 45.2 483.7

Soil ........................................................................................................................................ 45 n.a. n.a. –.5 n.a. n.a. n.a.

Recreational land and water (public) ....................................................................................... 46 n.a. n.a. –.9 .9 n.a. n.a.

Forests and other wooded land ............................................................................................... 47 285.8 28.8 n.a. –.6 29.4 314.6

NONPRODUCED/ENVIRONMENTAL ASSETS

Uncultivated biological resources ................................................................................................. 48 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.

Wild fish .................................................................................................................................... 49 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.

Timber and other plants and cultivated forests ....................................................................... 50 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.

Other uncultivated biological resources ................................................................................... 51 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. Unproved subsoil assets ............................................................................................................... 52 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.

Undeveloped land ......................................................................................................................... 53 n.a. n.a. –19.9 19.9 n.a. n.a.

Water (economic effects of changes in stock) ............................................................................ 54 ............................ n.a. –38.7 38.7 n.a. ........................

Air (economic effects of changes in stock) ................................................................................. 55 ............................ n.a. –27.1 27.1 n.a. ........................

n.a. = Not available

* The calculated value of the entry was negative.

NOTE: Leaders (...) indicate an entry is not applicable.

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis (1994a) SURVEY OF CURRENT BUSINESS, April 1994. The table has been

slightly simplified for this report.

the purview of the environmental accounts ex￾tend? Table 4–1 shows BEA’s tentative decisions

on how it proposed to structure its supplemen￾tal accounts (BEA’s Integrated Environmental and

Economic Satellite Accounts [IEESA] from Bureau

of Economic Analysis, 1994a: Table 1). Phase II