[Answered] What is Green Budgeting? Do you think that it can help in tackling the problem of climate change.

 “Green budgeting” is the usage of the budget–taxes, spending and policy co-ordination– to assess and promote the alignment that is essential to meet environmental goals (OECD). It shows financial outlays and tax policies that have positive climate change impacts. It is not only about how much money is allotted to tiger or forest protection. It is more about integrating it into every aspect of your economy and ensuring there is no wasteful use of natural resources, ensuring a transition to a low-carbon economy.

Various Advantages-

1. Sustainable development- It lead to better usage of natural resources like lands, waters etc. and also provide the assurance that not only the present but the future generations are also hazard free and safe. The main idea of having the green accounting is to help understand the advantages of achieving traditional and desired economics goals in respect with environmental goals.
2. Reduce fiscal deficit– Integrating environmental information and better usage of natural resources, fines, taxes for dirty carbon provide increased Government resources and income and also reduce government spending on efforts to reduce air pollution. Also it help in better policies and better usage of government resources.
3. Better Policies- It increases the related information which is available for analysing key policy issues, especially when those vital and important pieces of information are often overlooked left unrecognised. This lead to better policies based on data in a wholistic and integrated manner.
4. Research and development- The Green accounting/budgeting helps to promote a sustainable future for businesses as it brings green research and development and green public procurement into the big picture.
5. Integrated budget– It include all the dimensions of sustainable development (ecological balance, social progress and economic growth) completely integrated in one single policy that is budget document. The major importance is given to non-economic targets such as percentage of reduction in carbon emission in a given year that the government expects to reduce. It ensure coherence of economic, social, sectoral, and environmental policies, and plans instruments, including fiscal measures and the budget.
6. Better use of natural resources- Unfortunately, the value and services that forests render are rarely captured in national accounting systems. The advantages of investing in our natural resources are many. For instance, the Center for International Forestry Researchestimates that families living in and around forests derive an average of one-fifth to one-fourth of their income from forest-based resources.

Way forward-

India is considered to be one of the most vulnerable countries with various climate change danger like floods, drought, landslide, sea-level rise. Climate change will endanger our food security, agriculture, forests, water resources, marine biodiversity, coastal areas and coastal livelihoods. Green budgeting in India is thus quite relevant. Government can also create a Green Protection Fund (GPF) which could be used to protect existing wildlife, front-line forest protection force with better equipped, forest belts, free flowing of rivers without garbage and sludge, and better biodiversity protection.