Contas Econômicas Ambientais
Scheduled for 2020, Forest and Energy Accounts are one more step towards Green GDP
May 31, 2019 02h00 PM | Last Updated: June 03, 2019 02h34 PM
The Environmental-Economic Accounts of Forests and Energy, which will be part of the Green Gross Domestic Product - GGDP, are scheduled to be released in 2020. It was stated by João Bosco de Azevedo, IBGE director of Geosciences, when closing the Teeb project - The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, held on Wednesday (29) in Brasília (DF).
Teeb is a cooperation project between Brazil and Germany to integrate the value of the ecosystems and biodiversity into the decision making of public policies and business sector, warning about the costs of environmental degradation. This project supported the IBGE and other institutions in the development of the Environmental-Economic Accounts.
"From the moment that one perceives the stock of natural resources of a country, either water, wood or energy, it is understood how they are being used by different economic sectors", said Raquel Agra, director of the Teeb project, reinforcing the need to promote the potential of the natural capital to the Gross Domestic Product - GDP and break down the idea that nature is a barrier to the development.
The new Accounts will pinpoint the stock and use of forests and energy in the Brazilian economy, by revealing, for instance, whether the amount of native forests increased or decreased in a certain period of time.
This work has been done for the water resources in the Water Accounts, released last year for the first time ever, through a partnership between the IBGE and the National Water Agency - ANA. That publication unveiled that, for each R$1 produced in 2015, six liters of water were consumed. Including data for the Major Regions, the new edition will also be released next year.
The Environmental Accounts of Water, Forests and Energy will comprise the GGDP, which is under the responsibility of the IBGE since 2017. "We area now discussing the decree that will organize the National Accounts, having the IBGE in an important role in this process. There is an issue on the production of this information, which, together, will produce the GGDP", explained the IBGE director of Geosciences.
The need to invest in this project is even greater in a country like Brazil, which concentrates 20% of the biodiversity and 12% of the fresh water available on the planet, according to the Ministry of Environment - MMA.
"We need to know how to measure and establish goals in the modern administration. Words like 'contribute', 'streamline', 'support' are beautiful, yet they cannot be measured. In order to know whether we grew or not, we need to have something that produces numbers" said Eduardo Camerini, MMA secretary of Biodiversity when closing the Teeb project.
