Statistics for Green Economy
Since the ‘Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment’ in 1972 and the ‘Rio Declaration on
Environment and Development’ in 1992, the interaction between environment and economy has been
recognized as an essential element of human life. So, in order to improve the quality of human life,
actions to protect the natural environment from pollution or destruction have progressed throughout
the economic development of advanced countries. In order to reduce air or water emissions of
pollution materials, a green innovation on life-style has been propagated worldwide. For example, less
use of pollution-oriented products or more use of eco-friendly products has become preferable in
consumption behavior. Hence, the growth paradigm has changed from quantitative-oriented growth,
in which high or rapid growth rates were preferred in order to increase society members’ welfare, to
qualitative-oriented growth which could increase the quality of their lives including sustainable and
serviceable natural environment.
Until now, however, the natural environment has been shown to be worsening on a global scale. Due
to growth that is more rapid than the ability for earth to absorb polluted materials from this growth,
emissions of CO2 have increased continuously, and so, the global warming has been sustained. This
global warming has caused climate changes like melting snow in frozen lands, frequent heavy rains,
and droughts to magnify. Therefore, through critical review of this stylized growth and development,
sustainable development has been suggested as a new growth engine, and has been realized in some
countries. For mitigation of climate change in particular, Low Carbon-Green Growth has been started
and put into practice since the announcement of the Koyto protocol. In Korea, this Low-Carbon-
Green Growth strategy has become a new vision of growth. Now, a long-term plan for implementation
of the green growth strategy has been prepared in government policies and activated in the economy
and society in Korea.
Data for statistics on Green Growth are collected from surveys or registered administrative records.
Green industry statistics may be compiled from survey data in order to measure sales of green
products and the number of green jobs. Moreover, many kinds of data on the environment and
economic performance have been produced for multiple purposes, and have cumulated within sources
such as databases. Basically, these statistics provide primary information for the System of
Environmental-Economic Accounts (SEEA).
Now, by using individual statistics and SEEA data, indicator sets could be designed for a special
purpose. For example, some indicator sets such as GGIs and GLIs could be officially constructed and
used for implementation of a green growth strategy and review of green life-style behavior. Of course,
each element in indicator sets should be representative of its category or field. On the other hand, a
composite indicator may be calculated and utilized as an index style. But this index is not labeled as
an official statistic because there is a lack of methodology for aggregation. Anyway, in practice,
statistics on Green Growth seem to be compiled in different styles; individual statistics, indicators,
and composite indexes. In the case of aggregated indicators like GGIs or SEEA, their quality would
expect to be better than disaggregated data or individual statistics.