Centre to start measuring ‘green GDP’ of States

Centre to start measuring ‘green GDP’ of States

News:

1. Central government for the first time calls for a national environment survey to measure green GDP of state.

Important Facts:

2. The government will start a five-year exercise to compute district-level data of the country’s environmental wealth.
3. The  data will be used to calculate ‘green’ Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of every states.

4.The data required for the inventory would be sourced from data-sets that already exist with other government ministries.

5. The project will begin from September in 54 districts.
6. Under the project, Land will be demarcated into “grids” with about 15-20 grids per district
7. The grids will capture the key feature which will be used to compute the value these include:

• Diversity of State geography
• Farmland
• Wildlife
• Emissions pattern

8. The data obtained will help government to understand policy decisions such as:

• Compensation to be paid during land acquisition
• Calculation of funds required for climate mitigation

9. The government has also launched a ‘green skilling’ programme under which youth, particularly school dropouts, would be trained in a range of ‘green jobs.