Think before throwing that plastic bag into the river. You might actually be lowering the country’s gross national product (GNP).

The government is working on a methodology that will add the value of things such as clean environment as part of natural resources for calculating the GNP.

Thus far, economic development indicators like GNP and GDP, didn’t consider the stock and flow of natural resources.

It is a fact that industries grew at the cost of degrading natural resources, so a more sustainable development indicator was needed. So in 2003, the United Nations presented a general framework of integration of environmental and economic accounting that can be used for macroplanning of a country.

The good news is that the Indian government has taken serious note of this. At last.

The first step in achieving such an international standard of green GDP is for every country to have a national database of natural resource accounting. The second step is to calculate the cost of recovery of polluted resources. While many European countries have already prepared such databases, India made a beginning in 2003. However, incorporating the data into a green GDP figure has acquired momentum only now.

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