Environmental Accounts at Regional Level

Abstract

Regional Economic indicator have affected by development of national level economic indicator. Recently, Japanese Economic Planning Agency published a trial of the Environmental and Economic Accounts at national level in Japan. Consequently, estimation of environmental accounts at regional level has come to a great issue for regional agency. This paper aims to show an example of environmental accounts at regional level and to point out problems of its estimation.Traditional environmental accounts consist of (1) single indicator based on SNA, such as MEW or Green GNP, (2) satellite accounts of SNA recommended by UN, (3) Natural resource accounts consist of material indicator. We think that satellite accounts will become to main stream of environmental accounts.Japanese Economic Planning Agency published a trial of the Environmental and Economic Accounts. It shows (1) values of protection related to environment in stocks and flows in SNA, (2) Imputed environmental costs consist of monetary values of external diseconomy related to environment, (3) eco domestic products (EDP) to make by deduction of imputed environmental costs from GDP.Imputed environmental costs include air pollution, water pollution, destruction of ecological system caused by land development or deforestation, exploitation of subsoil resources, etc.We have made a trial of the regional imputed environmental costs by division of national level values, and estimated eco domestic products (EDP) at regional level. We should have made the prefectural Imputed Environmental Costs separately. But if we can get appropriate distribution indicator, this approach also might become a way to make regional indicator.According to this estimation, total net prefectural products indicates 390.1 trillion yen, while total imputed environmental costs is 8.4 trillion yen, so the proportion of total prefectural imputed environmental costs to total net prefectural products was 2.2%. But according to prefectural data, they are distributed from 4.1% (Saitama) to 1.0% (Tottori). Moreover, if we calculate the imputed environmental costs per 1 km2, they are distributed from 398 million yen (Tokyo) to 3 million yen (Iwate).There are many differences in environmental problems between regions, so we think there is great significance to make the environmental accounts at regional level. But we do not satisfied to this estimates. We hope to many other trials of estimates for environmental accounts at regional levels are done by different way.