Upcoming Events

We invite you to attend the next seminar on "Accounting for Sustainable Development" - Concepts, indicators and policy use - by Prof. Dr. Peter Bartelmus, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, and Wuppertal University:

The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro advanced the magic wand of sustainable development. Government, industry and civil society readily embraced the concept. The opacity of the concept, rather than genuine consensus, appears to be the reason for this embracement, and disillusion spread rapidly after the Summit. A de facto focus on economic growth, thinly veiled by sustainability rhetoric, reveals a reductionist view of equating sustainable development with economic growth.

A first step towards reversing this trend is to operationalize the elusive notion of environmental sustainability: New accounts and balances do just this. They provide a coherent picture of the interaction between environment and economy. 'Greened' national accounts measure economic sustainability in terms of (produced and natural) capital maintenance. Balances of material flows assess ecological sustainability as the dematerialization of production and consumption. First results indicate weak (economic) sustainability of industrialized economies; strong sustainability is not in sight because material 'throughput' remains at high levels in most countries.

Strategies of environmental sustainability seek to address potential ecological limits to economic performance and growth. They may ignore the limits ('the market will handle it'), push the limits (technology, the savior) or comply with the limits (rules and regulations, sufficiency in lifestyles). Accounting indicators can help to specify and monitor these strategies.

Open questions remain. They generate polarized views on
· Ecological (strong) vs. economic (weak) sustainability, i.e. the question of 'substitutability' of natural capital
· monetary green accounting vs. physical environmental statistics and indicators
· accounting vs. modeling
· corporate vs. national accounting: the micro-macro-link.

Prof. Bartelmus will address some of these questions in connection with the recent publication of his new book "Green Accounting" written with Co-author Eberhard K. Seifert, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy. After the presentation the floor will be open for questions and discussion.

When: 14 August 2003, 2.30pm - 3.30pm

Where: Building DC2 at 2 UN Plaza, Conference room 23rd floor

For further information please contact:
UN Statistics Division
Environment Statistics Section
DC2-1410, TWO United Nations Plaza
New York, New York 10017, USA
E-mail: contact WGCI
Tel: +1-212-963-8564