Att synliggöra ekonomins påverkan på naturen: miljöräkenskaper i svensk politik 1966-2017

Abstract

This paper uses documents from the Swedish riksdag and public reports from 1966-2017 to map the development of ecological indicators in Sweden that complement the GDP-measure to show the level of environmental sustainability of society. It uses an ecological economic perspective which views the economy as a subsystem of the natural environment, and therefore pays special attention to physical indicators that show the exchange of energy, resources and waste and emissions between the economy and nature. The purpose is to answer both the historical question of when and what indicators has been decided upon, and the analytical question of whether those indicators have in fact worked to show the economy’s impact on the environment or not. The paper is structured around four historical episodes: 1966-1989, 1991, 1999-2006 and 2017. The main findings are that a whole statistical system called environmental accounting or green national accounts (miljöräkenskaper) was developed in the two earlier episodes with the clear aim to understand the relationship between the economy and the environment. In this system, physical indicators on the exchange of energy and material between the economy and nature, as well as indicators on the state of the environment, was seen as key to understand and manage this relation. In the two more recent episodes, a limited set of indicators from this statistical system was introduced in the state budget, but they only included indicators on emissions and the state of the environment and left out those of the physical energy- and material throughput of the economy.