Even as the debate on environment versus growth continues, the government on Monday said it will conduct an assessment of the impact of GDP growth on ecology using a green accounting system. It will set up an expert group to evaluate the impact of economic growth on environment as part of its efforts to bring in institutional reforms and improve environmental governance, and the process is expected to be complete by 2015.
?The Planning Commission and environment ministry are soon going to set up a high-level expert group under the chairmanship of (environmental economist) Partha Dasgupta of Cambridge University. This expert group will provide a road map for green National Accounts… By 2015, we would report GDP after taking into account environmental costs,? said environment minister Jairam Ramesh while releasing an interim report on low carbon strategies for inclusive growth headed by Kirit Parikh.
The new panel will also include distinguished economists Nitin Desai, Vijay Kelkar and Parikh.
Planning commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who was also present, said, ?I fully endorse the view of Jairam Ramesh that growth should be sustainable and it is desirable that we should reduce emission intensity.?
This assumes significance as Ramesh had recently questioned the country?s 9% growth reports, contending that if the impact on ecology had been taken into consideration, the real growth would have been only around 6%.
The Parikh committee has suggested increasing efficiency in five focus areas of buildings, appliances, fuel norms for vehicles, power generation mix and forestry through determined and aggressive efforts. The final report of the committee will be out early next year.
?Savings and mitigation should come from a shift in coal to other sources like nuclear, wind and solar and that will save us 10-20,000 mw of coal capacity. In case of forestry, there has to be a shift in the fuel mix in favour of ultra super critical boilers,? Desai said.
However, the expert group remained divided on the issue of imposing upfront tax on diesel vehicles particularly Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) because some of the members felt such an up-front tax would be unfair to the manufacturers as up-front costs are important determinant in vehicle choice.
The idea of imposing up-front tax on diesel guzzling SUVs was mooted by Ramesh who had said that the use of vehicles like SUVs in countries like India is criminal.
The group felt that it may simply get rid of the relative distortions in fuel prices by letting petrol and diesel be priced on the same footing, and let fuel efficiency and technology govern the choice of vehicle for the consumers.
However, Parikh said, ?If you are putting heavy tax on petrol because it is for luxury consumption and if you don?t want to put the similar tax on diesel, then obviously we have to put the same kind of tax on diesel vehicles like SUVs and others.?