It is now clear to countries around the world that economic development is
no longer sustainable at the expense of the natural environment. Only economic
accounting integrated with environmental accounting allows for controlling any
imbalances and finding out the trade-offs for appropriate policy decisions. In
developing countries, like India, solutions are being sought to enhance the value of
natural capital in policy decisions, in a similar way as in developed economies.
This chapter introduces how India is implementing the System of Economic and
Environmental Accounting (SEEA), now recognised by the UN as an international
statistical standard. It also highlights new opportunities in data availability and
technological advances that suggest innovative ways to exploit this information for
environmental accounting purposes.
Keywords: Environmental-economic accounting, Ecosystem services, India statistics, National-regional accounts, Natural capital.
