Sir Partha's 'green' report for Indian PM published

The Prime Minister of India, has inaugurated a newreport on Green National Accounts for India.

Dr. Manmohan Singh, thanked Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, Professorial Research Fellow of the University of Manchester's Sustainable Consumption Institute, for chairing the Expert Group that produced the report and for leading the initiative since 2011 at the Prime Minister's request.

Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta is considered one of the world's experts in environmental economics. He developed the concept of the inclusive wealth of nations, and believes that measuring the wealth of countries by GDP is an error.

He advocates the creation of new indicators that include three types of assets: capital "industrialised" or physical capital (machines, buildings, infrastructure); human capital (education and skills of the population) and natural capital (land, forests, minerals and fossil fuels).

The report provides an outline of what would ideally be needed for a comprehensive set of national accounts. It sets out that national governments and international agencies ought to go beyond even green national accounts, by reclassifying certain classes of goods and services and adding others that are currently missing.

The demand for green national accounts has arisen because of a growing recognition that contemporary national accounts are an unsatisfactory basis for economic evaluation. The report’s release coincides with the launch of India’s latest Five Year Plan, which has sustainable growth as its core objective.

The Plan document notes that economic development will be sustainable only if it is pursued in a manner which protects the environment, including greater attention to the management of water, forest and land resources.

Notes for editors

The Executive Summary of the report is available at: http://www.sci.manchester.ac.uk/publications/reports/green-national-accounts-for-india---executive-summary

The Prime Minister’s address is available at: http://pmindia.nic.in/speech-details.php?nodeid=1301

More about Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta's here: http://www.sci.manchester.ac.uk/people/core-research-staff/partha-dasgupta

Professor Dasgupta’s research interests include poverty issues, economic development, nutrition, economics of technological change, population and the environment, among others. Among his articles are, "Economic Theory and Exhaustible Resources," "The Control of Resources," "An Inquiry into Well-Being and Destitution," " Social Capital: A Multifaceted Perspective,” and "Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment." Partha Dasgupta is a Professorial Research Fellow of the Sustainable Consumption Institute at The University of Manchester and Professor Emeritus of Economics at Cambridge University, a member of St John's College.

For more information, please contact Lynda McIntosh, Communications and Marketing Manager, Sustainable Consumption Institute via email at: lynda.mcintosh@manchester.ac.uk or on 0161 275 0187.