Asia-Pacific Development Journal,
Vol. 3, No. 2, December 1996 |

Sajjad Zohir |

The practical task of identifying appropriate resources and valuing them are often quite tedious. This paper reviews current approaches to natural resources accounting and draws upon studies in five countries of the region to discuss selected issues on accounting forest resources, agricultural land and agricultural residues. The relevance of an impact account is also probed. It is argued that natural resources accounting, as framed in terms of physical, value and non-environmental impact accounts, serves limited purpose for reassessing economic growth. It is recommended that studies on physical accounts interlinkages between resources and environmental variables be given priority for meaningful inputs to policy-making.

Social concern with sustainability of the environment we live in is widely acknowledged. Along with it, our perception about development has been persistently undergoing changes. Economic growth measured by the conventional definition of income is now considered a deficient measure of social development. It is also recognized that singular pursuit of traditional economic growth may conflict with sustenance of the resource base and environmental situation which, in the long run, may render economic growth itself to be unsustainable. However, incorporating these concerns in economic policy making is yet to be fully realized. One area where these are being addressed is our national accounting system. The standard system of national accounts (SNA) regularly does stock-taking of the macroeconomic aggregates and, thereby, provides information on changes in these aggregates to suggest if the economy is better or worse off than before. The information embodied in the SNA is also an important ingredient to economic policy making. With increasing recognition of the resource and environmental situations as important elements in defining social development, there are now efforts to include these variables in the SNA.