Environment Education

Case for green accountingBittu SahgalNature feeds the birds in the sky, the fish in our waters and the deer and tigers in our forests. The fact seems so obvious as to need no mention. So let‚s take the thought a step further. Water from the Himalayan glaciers slakes the thirst and irrigates the fields of over 400 million people in the Indian subcontinent. Again, it hardly needs mentioning; every child is taught this in school. Now let‚s take the thought still further. The government does not feed the people of the Indian subcontinent ‚ nature does. Now we have an argument on our hands. No agronomist will accept this statement. Nor will any politician, businessman, economist, or social activist for that matter. I doubt if they are even remotely aware of the extent to which the food security of India is dependant upon wild nature. Even beneficiary communities, who live on our coasts, in forests and depend on nature‚s larder take it for granted ‚ as they do the air they breathe. Which is why they undervalue their resources and sell their land to developers of all persuasions. Even without placing a specific monetary value on the food directly obtained from nature, it is easy to see just how significant such resources are. Take the case of the sea.The seas help meet part of the nutritional needs of around 50 million people every single day. Much of this food is consumed within the fishing community, or is bartered for goods and services. It might be reasonable then to presume that inland waters, including India‚s many lakes, swamps, streams and rivers directly feed another 100 million people ‚ every day. Much of this food too is consumed or bartered. And then we have wild ‚Ëœland-foods‚. In Rajasthan, en route to school, village children routinely fill their pockets with wild ber fruit (zyzyphus sp.) or amla (emblica officinalis). There is not a state in the country where this gather-and-consume act is not played out by young and old. These are just illustrative examples. Without overstating the case, economists have no clue whatsoever of the monetary value of wild foods. They never take nature‚s larder into account, until someone sells it for money.And because we know not what we lose, India‚s munificent natural treasury is being emptied. In the absence of any resource accounting, economists readily advise decision makers to turn marine nurseries into ports and other commercial infrastructure, and natural forests into golf courses and housing colonies. Wetlands are reclaimed and our purest aquifers are used as hazardous waste dumping grounds. Precious topsoil is treated like dirt (pun intended).Comments Pavan Sukhdev, an international banker and director of the Green Accounting for Indian States Project (GAISP): “India‚s forests deliver vast economic benefits, which we simply do not account for anywhere in our gross domestic product (GDP). Which is why GAISP is in the process of setting up a system to measure the economic value of forests from conservation and natural forest growth, as…