Environmental Research Web via Planet Under Pressure: Brazil and India pay a high price for rapid economic growth, according to experts speaking at a major international meeting in London, Planet Under Pressure. Between 1990 and 2008, the wealth of these two countries as measured by GDP per capita rose 34% and 120% respectively. But a myopic focus on economic capital is flawed, scientists and economists at the conference argue. Natural capital, the sum of a country's assets, from forests to fossil fuels and minerals, declined 46% in Brazil and 31% in India, according to a new "Inclusive Wealth Indicator" designed to augment GDP as a measure of economic progress.When measures of natural, human and manufactured capital are considered together to obtain a more comprehensive value, Brazil's "Inclusive Wealth" rose just 3% and India's rose 9% over that time.
"The work on Brazil and India illustrates why Gross Domestic Product is inadequate and misleading as an index of economic progress from a long-term perspective," says Professor Anantha Duraiappah, Executive Director of the United Nations University's International Human Dimensions Programme (UNU-IHDP).
"A country could completely exhaust all its natural resources while posting positive GDP growth. We need an indicator that estimates the wealth of nations – natural, human and manufactured and ideally even the social and ecological constituents of human well-being."
The first Inclusive Wealth Report, to debut in full at a joint UNU-IHDP and United Nations Environment Programme event at June's UN "Rio+20" summit in Brazil, will describe the "inclusive wealth" of 20 nations: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Japan, Kenya, Nigeria, Norway, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, USA, United Kingdom and Venezuela. The 20 nations featured in the report represent 72% of world GDP and 56% of global population....
The Tower of Babel, from a 1539 Russian manuscript of Cosmas Indicopleustes
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