UK To Urge Accounting For Natural Capital blahblah Rio +20 Conference blahblah Change GDP blahblah

[hatrack]

(Reuters) - Britain will urge businesses and governments to start accounting for natural capital as an additional way of measuring economic activity at a U.N. sustainability summit in June, its environment minister said on Thursday. This could mean moving towards a concept of GDP+, or measuring the use or loss of natural resources like water, agriculture and forests to gauge economic activity, in addition to relying solely on economic output.

"A snapshot of the state of economies based on GDP (gross domestic product) is too narrow," Caroline Spelman told reporters after a speech to businesses and non-governmental organizations on the UK's aims for the Rio+20 summit.

"Green accounting would work for all countries. We believe you can really drive significant 'greening' if you take proper account of the value of natural capital in your government accounts," she added.

Currently, governments compile national accounts to track the activity of their economies and the data is used to calculate economic indicators like GDP. Some countries have experimented with environmental accounting over the past 20 years, but there is no international consensus on a standardized method of doing it.

EDIT

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/09/us-green-accounting-uk-idUSTRE8181QH20120209

[Vincardog]

1. Countries and politicians should be accounting for RAISING standards of living

for the poorest of their citizens. That would be the Greenest accounting