NEW DELHI : Warning that environmental degradation could have serious consequences, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today emphasised that economic growth should be based on optimal use of natural resources and development must be environmentally sustainable.
Often, he regretted, “economic policies designed to promote growth have been implemented without considering their full environmental consequences, presumably on the assumption that these consequences would either take care of themselves or could be dealt with separately”.
Singh said this while inaugurating the International Workshop on Green National Accounting for India here.
He said India’s commitment to planned economic development reflects the government’s determination to improve the economic conditions of people and an affirmation of the role of the government in bringing about this outcome through a variety of social, economic, and institutional initiatives.
“But as the economy develops the capacity to grow rapidly, it gives rise to many new challenges. For instance, natural resources are limited, and final.
“And one needs to decide how to use these scarce resources optimally, both from the economic development and the sustainability perspectives,” Singh said.
The Prime Minister said there is evidence to suggest that such policies may actually result in a net decrease in human well-being.
Globally, he said, environmental degradation is manifesting itself through the loss of fertile soils, desertification, decreasing forest cover, reduction of fresh water availability, and an extreme loss of bio-diversity.
“These are serious consequences, and it has become clear today that economic development must be environmentally sustainable,” he added.
Singh said through planned economic development, India aims to attain economic growth and poverty alleviation, and doing so in a sustainable manner.
Pointing out that the rural poor, depends on natural resources for their subsistence and earning their livelihood, the Prime Minister said, “The poor need to be fully factored in when we deliberate the calculus of growth, which can be sustained only if natural resources are managed on a sustainable basis.”
The 12th Five Year Plan has, for the first time, mainstreamed sustainability as its primary goal.
“The Plan document notes that economic development will be sustainable only if it is pursued in a manner which protects the environment, and that there is a need to pay greater attention to the management of water, forest and land resources,” Singh said.
He said there has been a long-standing argument that contemporary national accounts systems do not adequately account for the costs arising out of the use of environmental and natural resources and that GDP is not the best way of measuring the true well-being of nations.
One suggests, he said, the extension of conventional national income accounts by developing satellite accounts of environment and natural resources. The other suggests extension of input-output tables for the economy as a whole.
“As a possible solution to the limitations of national income accounting, integrated environmental and economic accounting has emerged as a new concept,” he said.
The Prime Minister added that the government has taken several initiatives aimed at greening the Indian economy. A number of national strategies and policies, which inculcate the principle of sustainability, are already in place, he added.
These include, National Clean Energy Fund, National Environmental Policy, National Agricultural Policy and National Electricity Policy.
A new initiative, he said, that is worth mentioning is the programme of the Ministry of Rural Development for “greening” rural development.
“While it is expected that the above policies and initiatives will contribute to a green bottom-line in India’s national accounts, I do not doubt the difficulties that will be encountered in capturing a diverse set of variables in a statistical framework and compiling the accounts from a truly green perspective,” he said. (AGENCIES)
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