Swedish Parliament Plans Budget for Environmental Indicators

Back to Map Page April, 1999 Stockholm, Sweden The Swedish parliament is planning to take the revolutionary step of including environmental indicators in next year's budget plans. The outline for the new budget, to be voted on next fall, include environmental quality goals--and money to help achieve those goals--in air pollution, water quality, resource conservation, and other areas. By including these indicators in its budget, Sweden will move forward in the effort to reduce "externalized" costs in economic accounting and in acknowledging the real costs of environmental degradation. Environmental protection requires public responsibility for pollution. Sweden's parliament is attempting to include responsibility for pollution in the national budget. Externalized costs are expenses such as pollution clean-up and health care that result from economic activities but are not included in the budget. For example, the costs of water purification downstream of a factory are considered external to the production budget at the factory. Somebody has to pay to purify the water before it is reused, and often the next users pay the clean-up costs. On a national level, externalized costs can include general environmental liabilities such as air pollution, soil erosion, water pollution, or respiratory ailments that are difficult to pin to any single producer. Including funding to cover externalized costs in a national budget is important in at least two ways: it provides a way to acknowledge those costs and to calculate their size, and it provides a dedicated pool of money to remediate environmental and health costs, instead of forcing some other budget area to find funds to cover these expenses. The budget outline includes funding to monitor seven important indicators: airborne emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides; aquatic and marine emissions of phosphorus and nitrates; energy efficiency; and airborne benzene levels. Less revolutionary but still important are a number of other environmental spending allowances. Among these are funding for environmental remediation (such as cleaning up landfills and liming lakes to remediate acid rain effects), budgeting to purchase new nature reserves, and environmental research. Among the target research areas listed in the outline budget are toxins, environmental monitoring methods, and environmentally-friendly methods of building construction, including construction materials. In addition to making the national accounts more realistic, Swedish budget planners hope that the inclusion of environmental quality indicators will help provide data for planners. Both economic and environmental planners would benefit from having better systematic data to plan for environmental costs. For more information, see these related web sites: Environmental issues and environmental protection in Sweden Greenpeace Sweden (choose a language to switch from Swedish) To read more, see Environmental Science, a Global Concern, Cunningham and Saigo, 5th ed. Ecological economics: p. 162-63 External costs: p. 173 Air pollution: p. 401-404 Conventional "criteria" pollutants in the U.S.: p. 387-92 Environmental Science, Enger and Smith, 6th ed. Environmental policy and decision making: p. 404 Environmental problems as economic problems: p. 331-333 Externalized costs: p. 342 Back to Map Page feedback form | permissions | international | locate your campus rep | request a review copy digital solutions | publish with us | customer service | mhhe home Copyright ©2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. McGraw-Hill Higher Education is one of the many fine businesses of the The McGraw-Hill Companies.