Methodological Questions and Historical Disputes in the Dutch Experience
Introduction
The National Accounting Matrix including Environmental Accounts (NAMEA) is, from an economic history point of view, a relatively new approach which serves as an environmental-economic information tool for policy-makers, scientists and the interested public. It was mostly developed in the late 1980s and 1990s at the Central Bureau of Statistics of the Netherlands (CBS) because the Dutch public and policy-makers were aware of an increasing number of problems regarding the natural environment and wanted to get a deeper insight into the state of these environmental problems. Consequently, this work was delegated to the CBS, a public institution which is policy-independent and has a very good reputation. Within the CBS, there were two strands of methodology concerning what an information system of this type should look like; on the one hand, the advocates of a ‘greened national income’ (GNI) approach, represented by Roefie Hueting’s department, and on the other hand, the advocates of a hybrid accounting system, represented by Steven Keuning’s department. The main methodological difference was ‘Does it make sense to monetize environmental damage and the environment?’ This discussion was not only restricted to the CBS, it was extended to a discussion disputed by the scientific community in the Netherlands and in the Dutch parliament, and then at European and at worldwide level. It finally resulted in the SEEA (System of Economic and Environmental Accounts) 2003. We think this question is still an important one from an environmental-economic point of view and from a more general view related to how methodological disputes are solved. In this respect, it makes sense to go back 25 years, especially if we take into account, for example, discussion on the Stern report.
Here we want to give an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of both methodologies. In the next sections, we explain both approaches in a very simplified manner. We will also examine some critical points.
History
Since the environment began to play an increasingly important part in the focus of policy-makers and the public, the demand for environmental accounting increased in the 1980s. The motivation for environmental accounts was the adoption by governments of the notion of sustainable development together with the understanding that economic activities and appropriate economic incentives play a central role in determining whether development is environmentally sustainable or not. Environmental accounts shall provide policy-makers and the public, first of all, with indicators and descriptive statistics to monitor the interaction between the environment and the economy and, second, with a database for strategic planning and policy analysis in order to identify more sustainable development paths and policy instruments for achieving these paths.
In principle, there are two different methodologies used for accounting for the environment. On the one hand, some economists (Hueting, 1974, 1980; Mäler, 1991; Hartwick, 1990) propose adjusting the net national income (NNI) for the value of environmental damage to generate a GNI. On the other hand, other economists, mostly national accountants (Keuning, 1991; de Haan, 2004; Keuning and Steenge, 1999) only want to relate the economic performance of an economy to environmental damage measured in physical units. The main difference between both approaches is that supporters of the GNI propose monetarizing environmental damage whereas opponents of this approach only want to develop a hybrid accounting system. This scientific discussion took place at international level (London Group, OECD, World Bank, EU, statistical bureaus) and at the same time within the Netherlands. That means that the involvement of the Netherlands in the problem could be interpreted as a kind of mirror image which represents not only the development of environmental accounts within the Netherlands, but also development in the rest of the world.
Of course, the number of different definitions of a GNI seems to be endless, but in principle all these different concepts try to subtract environmental damage measured in monetary units from the conventional NNI. Only the methods used to value environmental damage are different.1 In a certain sense, the approach of the Dutch economist Roefie Hueting (Hueting, 1974, 1980) seems to be representative of all other similar GNI approaches. To the author’s knowledge, this was the first approach to be developed. Some other Dutch economists developed the idea of a hybrid accounting system which they called National Accounting Matrix including Environmental Accounts and is a so-called satellite system. The leading researcher was Steven Keuning. He and his colleagues developed an accounting matrix where they relate economic indicators (measured in monetary units) to environmental indicators (measured in physical units). Of course, there are also some alternative approaches such as material flow accounting, but the NAMEA seems to be superior to alternative approaches.2 Because of the large number of existing books and papers in the literature on sustainability, we cannot review every approach. But the question that remains is, what does the term sustainability mean?3
This vague concept is related to a basic definition of sustainability in economics. The starting point of sustainability was the notion of sustainable income expressed by Hicks (1946): ‘income is the maximum amount an individual can consume during a period and remain as well off at the end of the period as at the beginning.’ The sustainable income of Hicks (1946) is interpreted as the amount of income that can be spent without depleting the wealth which generates income. Hence, sustainability requires non-decreasing levels of capital stock over time, or, at the level of the individual, non-decreasing per capita capital stock.
The indicators of sustainability could be based on either the value of total assets in every period or the change in wealth, depreciation of capital in the conventional national accounts. Consequently, for a proper measure of sustainability, all assets should be included in this type of indicator; manufactured capital, human capital and environmental capital.
In the last 50 years, only manufactured capital was recorded in the system of national accounts (SNA) because an accepted method to measure and value natural and human capital did not exist.4
Economic sustainability can be defined as strong or weak. The concepts of weak sustainability only require the aggregated value of all assets to remain constant. That means that one form of capital can be substituted for another and natural capital can therefore be depleted or the environment degraded as long as there are compensating investments in other types of capital: manufactured, human or other types of natural capital. In the words of Brekke (1997): ‘A development is said to be weakly sustainable if the development in non-diminishing from generation to generation. This is by now the dominant interpretation of sustainability.’ Common and Perrings (1992) called the concept of weak sustain ability ‘Hartwick-Solow sustainability’.5
In contrast to weak sustainability, the concept of strong sustainability requires each value of a specific form of natural capital to remain constant. The idea behind this strong concept is that natural capital is a complement to manufactured capital rather than a substitute. This concept of strong sustainability has some direct consequences for environmental policy: (a) renewable resources such as fish or forests can only be exploited at the natural rate of net growth; (b) the use of non-renewable resources should be minimized and, ideally, (c) used only at the rate for which renewable substitutes are available; (d) emissions should not exceed the assimilative capacity of the environment.
The consequence of these demands is that the indicator of strong sustainability requires all natural capital to be measured in physical units.
For example, Dasgupta and Mäler (2001) have argued that prices can fully reflect sustainability and the limits to substitution. Hamilton (2000) points out the restrictive and unlikely conditions that must be fulfilled in order for prices to provide a true measure of sustainability.
To this purpose, Hueting’s Sustainable National Income (SNI) is a methodology which estimates what the level of national income would be if the economy met all environmental standards using currently available technology. Hueting’s SNI is the maximum income that can be sustained without technological development (excluding the use of non-renewable resources). It is not meant to represent what the economy should look like, but rather to show to policy-makers and the public the distance between the current economy and a sustainable economy. Because of the complexity involved in calculating an SNI, no studies have produced comparable SNIs across countries.
In the following, we take only two different approaches into account, the NAMEA and SNI, as the most representative examples of integrated environmental and economic accounts, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches.
The NAMEA
Here we would like to give a short description of the NAMEA as it was developed in the Netherlands. We abstain from explaining the details and how the numbers in the NAMEA are calculated. We only want to give a brief overview of the NAMEA which explains what kind of information the NAMEA can provide for policy-makers.
The NAMEA is a statistical information system which combines national accounts and environmental accounts in a single matrix. The NAMEA is a satellite accounting matrix (SAM), as it is described in the SNA 1993 (chapter 21).6The concept of the NAMEA system is based on the work of Keuning (1992, 1993), de Haan and Keuning (1996) and de Boo et al. (1993). The origin of their work is the input–output approach7 of Leontief (1970).8 The NAMEA is a so-called satellite and can be added to a usual input–output table for analyses (see Chapter 8 in this book).
The NAMEA system itself contains no economic assumptions; it is only descriptive. It maintains a strict borderline between economic and environmental aspects. It is represented in monetary units on the one hand and in physical units on the other and, for this reason, it is called a hybrid accounting system.
To obtain a clear understanding of the inter-relationships between the natural environment and the economy, we must use their physical representation. If not, we are unable to understand these relations. If the NAMEA system were to assign monetary values to environmental problems, two problems would occur. First, the environment must be valued in monetary units. Second, differentiating between price changes and quantity changes is very complicated. Here we will give an idea of the structure of a NAMEA in order to explain the concept.
An extremely simplified version of the Dutch NAMEA is given in Table 2.1 for 2006.9 Here we take only two economic variables into account: the GDP and employment, and two environmental variables: greenhouse gases (GHG) and waste. Of course, these accounts have, in fact, far more variables. To give a general insight, information can be obtained from Table 2.1. Additionally, we have reduced all economic world to the agricultural sector, industrial sector, service sector and consumption.10
Table 2.1 A Simplified Version of the Dutch NAMEA
Source: data CBS and own calculations.
These numbers obviously do not give us much information and for this reason, it makes sense to express the values in percentages, as in Table 2.2. For example, we can see from the first row that agriculture accounts for 2.5 per cent of the GDP and 12 per cent of GHG.
Table 2.2 A Simplified Version of the Dutch NAMEA (%)
Source: own calculations.
To make it more obvious, we can reformulate the tables to the relative contributions to the variables. What Table 2.3 tells us is that agriculture contributes 4.69 more times GHG to the environment per unit of GDP. In this respect, the agricultural sector is the most polluting sector in the Netherlands.
Table 2.3 GHG to GDP Sector Ratio
Relative GHG to GDP figures |
|
|
Agriculture |
4.69 |
|
Industry |
1.25 |
|
Services |
0.42 |
|
Aggregate |
1.00 |
Source: own calculations.
The fundamental idea of the NAMEA is to extend the conventional national accounting matrix with two additional accounts. The first additional account is the account for environmental problems such as the greenhouse effect or ozone layer depletion.11 The selected environmental themes are partly global environmental problems and partly national and local environmental problems. For example, greenhouse gases are globally relevant, whereas acidification of the soil is mostly locally relevant. The local themes can differ from region to region. The second additional account represents environmental substances such as carbon dioxide or sulphur dioxide where these substances are expressed in physical quantities.12
The selection of themes and substances should follow environmental problems considered by policy-makers in the region as the most important. In the Netherlands that is done by the Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (1989, 1990, 1992, 1993)13 and approved by the Dutch parliament. We can see that the NAMEA generates consistent summary indicators for the environmental problems which are considered to be most pressing at political level.
In a certain sense, the NAMEA tables show the boundaries of the core national accounts. The physical accounts of the NAMEA expand these boundaries. The NAMEA distinguishes between households and industries, including public services as well.
Since the compilation of the NAMEA is explained in Keuning (1992) and Keuning et al. (1999), we will refer to them in detail.14
If NAMEA tables are available for different periods, we can also see how the profiles of economic activities change from time to time. These aspects are highly relevant to policy-makers and future estimations.
For example, de Boer et al. (1994) make use of a model with the data from the NAMEA to estimate the consequences of reducing the pollution levels to norms set by the Dutch parliament. Verbruggen et al. (1996) make estimations for different scenarios concerning sustainable economic development of the Netherlands until 2030. Without any doubt, the results of these model estimations hinge on assumptions made with regard to the behaviour of the rest of the world and assumptions regarding technical progress made to improve eco-efficiency.
If we consider these tables for certain periods, as in de Haan and Keuning (1995, 1996) or Keuning and de Haan (1997), we can break down the changes in emissions by industry into several effects:15 demand composition shift effects, output growth effects and eco-efficiency change effects. The first effect can be positive or negative in the sense that the claims to use the natural environment are reduced. The second effect is negative because more output generally means an increased use of the natural environment because of the laws of thermodynamics. The third effect is positive because of technological progress. De Haan (1996), for example, has connected the NAMEA with data on estimated costs and emission reductions in a range of potential energy-saving measures by industry in the Netherlands. He came to the conclusion that the Dutch economy would be better off to some extent if the most efficiency measures were applied first. However, if the norms for CO2 emissions set by the government were too restrictive, the result would be the reverse.
The NAMEA is a multi-purpose information system which is able to inform the public and policy-makers of the status quo of environmental assets and environmental pollution. More specifically, NAMEA provides policy-makers with a data framework which can be used to sketch the trade-off between the prevention of environmental damage and macro-economic policy objectives. Selecting which kind of environmental problem should be represented depends on political decisions and not on scientists’ decisions. This is the reason why NAMEAs in different countries are different. The British NAMEA, for example, contains 15 environmental substances and only three environmental themes (Vaze, 1999), the Japanese one contains 16 substances and six themes (Ike, 1999), the German one contains eight substances and two themes (Tjahjadi et al., 1999) and the Swedish NAMEA contains five substances (Hellsten et al., 1999).16 Without a doubt, it would be useful to standardize the NAMEAs in all countries, because of global environmental issues. It is nevertheless worth noting that Eurostat is releasing an EU27 NAMEA by 2011 covering 2000–2006.
Policy issues can be tackled. The data from the NAMEA can be used to calculate the effects of a shift in tax incidence, from labour to energy use, for example, on environmental and economic indicators in the NAMEA system. Additionally, the data can be used to model a general equilibrium model for estimating the consequences of a change in the tax system. With the help of the NAMEA, the consequences of specific political decisions can be calculated. For example, the reduction of acid substances caused by the introduction of catalytic converters in cars can be assessed. In the Netherlands, this resulted in a decrease in the burden of ozone layer depletion by nearly 12.3 per cent. In addition, new insights can be gained into the issues of who should pay for the environmental damage.17
As a result, the NAMEA is not only used to derive aggregate indicators from a consistent meso-level information system, it also provides data in the required format for all kinds of analyses.
The Sustainable National Income of Roefie Hueting
The aim of this section is to show what kinds of problems are connected with the concept of GNI. Since there are a number of distinct approaches and definitions of a GNI in the literature,18 we will concentrate on the concept of SNI as defined by Hueting (1974, 1980). There are two specific reasons why we investigate SNI. The first reason is that the SNI concept was used by Dutch econometricians who wanted to calculate the differences between the actual NNI in the Netherlands and Hueting’s SNI (1974, 1980). The second reason is that some Dutch economists and policy-makers have proposed introducing the concept of the SNI into the official statistics of the Netherlands. However, before we start with the analysis, we will explain Hueting’s ideas. More specifically, we will look at Hueting’s most relevant assumptions and how he wants to justify these assumptions.
According to Hueting, the system of national accounts (SNA) should be corrected for environmental losses or rather the monetary cost to abate these losses. If not, he fears that some important welfare losses of an economy are ignored.19 He calls, in particular, for the introduction of a practical concept of sustainability into the national accounting system. Hueting’s contributions concern the relationship of the indicators for the NNI and the SNI. It is important to see that his work is founded theoretically and then applied to economic statistics. His objective is to provide adequate information to the users of statistical data on the state of the natural environment. This section is mainly based on the work of Hueting (1974, 1980), Hueting and de Boer (2001), Hueting and Reijnders (1998) and Hueting et al. (1992, 1995). Hueting assumes that we (the inhabitants of the world) prefer the complete conservation of our natural environment to reach strong sustainability.20 The foundation for his view on sustainability goes back to J.S. Mill’s (1876) concept of steady state and stationary state.21 This implies that it is inadmissible to transfer environmental risks and burdens to future generations. The natural environment must be conserved by the living generation. This consideration is based on the principle of preferences for intergenerational equity. Hueting’s idea is to calculate the costs for the conservation of the natural environment and to subtract these costs from the NNI. To establish an appropriate maximum environmental burden to meet these preferences, it is seen as a task for natural scientists. Formally, the SNI is defined as:
where N is the number of harmful substances such as CO2, SO4 and so on, Di is the amount of substance i which is emitted above a specific sustainability level of this substance and C represents the avoidance cost function for this substance. Given these assumptions, it follows that the value of environmental degradation is equal to the conservation costs.22 Additionally, given that these costs are known, an SNI can be calculated. This is the difference between the NNI minus the aggregated costs to preserve the natural environment from degradation. Or in the words of Hueting and de Boer:
The SNI according to Hueting is the maximum net income which can be sustained on a geological time scale, with future technology progress assumed only in the development of substitutes for non-renewable resources, where such substitution is indispensable for sustaining environmental functions, in turn essential for sustaining income.
(2001, pp.19 and 70)
The gap between the NNI and SNI measures the dependence of the economy on its natural environment. If the gap increases, the economy becomes more unsustainable. If the gap decreases, the economy becomes more sustainable. Hueting’s assumptions avoid the problem that we must have knowledge about the future. Otherwise, we will run into unsolvable problems.23 Therefore, assumptions about preferences must be made. There are different reasons to assume that objective strong sustainability can be justified. First, Hueting argues that most countries have agreed that reaching strong sustainability is a policy objective since the publication of the Brundtland report.
However, there are some arguments in the literature to reject the SNI as a statistical tool. For example, if the use of environmental resources is prevented, the structure of the ‘sustainable’ economy will differ from the actual structure of the economy. Second, it is unclear what will happen with the international trade structure. It would be a strong mistake to ignore these changes. Consequently, a theoretical model must be used which considers the whole economy, to calculate Hueting’s SNI. As a result, we get a hypothetical SNI.24 To calculate this hypothetical SNI for the Netherlands, Verbruggen et al. (2001) have made some additional assumptions:25 (a) the individual preferences for the sustainable use of the environment are absolute and independent of costs. This implies that the aggregate demand curve for environmental functions is absolute price-inelastic; (b) the instantaneous realization of sustainability standards and no transition costs, implying that Hueting’s approach is a static one; (c) the sustainability standards are applied all over the world to avoid arbitrage effects between different countries; (d) labour market effects are ignored; no change in the unemployment rate is assumed; (e) the SNI must be calculated with sustainable relative prices; (f) the government does not change its politics in the sustainable economy.
Gerlagh et al. (2001, 2002) and Dellink et al. (2001) combine Hueting’s SNI with an AGE (Applied General Equilibrium) model to calculate the SNI for the Netherlands in 1990. To model the natural environment they use data from Keuning’s (1993) NAMEA and from de Boer (2002). However, the results of the various scenarios are different, but in principle it can be concluded that one half of the Dutch GDP was produced in an unsustainable way. Additionally, the reader might ask if the assumptions are realistic and if the results can be used for policy advising and policy-making. If any government implements a policy to conserve the natural environment and the national income is substantially cut, the results will be dangerous for the stability of the society if the protection costs are financed in a way that changes income distribution. This is because it is likely that the whole economy must be totally changed to obtain sustainability. A ‘transition’ approach to environmental policy and sustainability is then necessary.
The next point is that from politicians’ viewpoint, it is very risky to assume that there will be no technical progress in environmental technologies which would lower conservation or reconstructing costs. From Thomas Malthus to Stanley Jevons and the Club of Rome, predictions of the imminent ruin of humankind have so far been totally wrong (Beckerman, 2001).
In light of these problems, the Scientific Council for Government Policy of the Netherlands (WRR) states:
The fact that in abstracto there are scientific limiting conditions on behaviour would appear clear enough.… It is however an entirely different matter to determine in concreto whether those limits have been reached or are possibly already being breached, or whether they will come into effect at a point far beyond the relevant time-horizon for decision-making.
Further on: ‘The available knowledge is very much fragmentary in nature and the (dynamic) interactions between various sub-elements of the “system Earth” go beyond the human capacity for understanding’ (WRR, 2002, p. 19).
Keuning (1992) argues against the SNI as an accounting tool; he especially criticizes how the SNI is measured when he asserts: ‘Replacing the GDP (Gross National Product, P.S.) by a figure which is an erratic combination of statistic and the outcome of an (implicit) model thus amounts to throwing out the baby with the bath-water.’
El Serafy (1997, p. 221) also criticizes the concepts of ‘green accounting’ in general:
When current prices are used for (environmental) stock valuation, and changes in stock values are incorporated in the flow accounts, the integrity of the latter is damaged, and very little environmental wisdom will be gained from such procedure, and even less economic insight.
Further on he also argues that ‘accounting in physical units, or in indices based on physical units, are best for revealing environmental change’ (El Serafy, 1997, p. 224).
Finally, there are some fundamental critics from Norgaard et al. (1998) and others who argue that is impossible to fully value the environment in monetary units.
Conclusions
Now let us summarize what we have learned from the investigation into the NAMEA and SNI approach. First, it should be noted that the NAMEA system is really only a descriptive statistical tool where no economic assumptions should be made. As a result of this, the NAMEA in its naked formulation does not contain an implicit or explicit policy implication.
The most important argument for the NAMEA approach is probably that the accounting system, though it is a ‘heterodox’ tool, can be used by various economic perspectives and disciplines. The main reason is that it is free of value statements. The SNI approach, on the other hand, was rejected as a national accounting tool by many national accountants. The reason for this is that the SNI is based on a number of critical assumptions and implicitly, the SNI is based on the ‘ideology’ of strong sustainability. That means that policy-makers do not decide on environmental and implicitly on optimal economic policy, but the SNI forces a specific policy. For this reason, the SNI was for a long time preferred in Dutch policy and among the public because it delivers only one main indicator which is easy to understand. The NAMEA, on the other hand, is able to deliver an endless number of different indicators, depending on the number of economic and environmental indicators it aims at and needs to analyse. Much discussion has taken place in the scientific community and in the Dutch parliament over a period of 15 years. Now, the fact that the NAMEA is the ‘strongest tool’ for supporting the promotion of well-being and progress, as stated by commissioner Dimas in 2007, has been decided at European level.26 Compiling a NAMEA for all member states of the European Union was laid down in the European Strategy for Environmental Accounting (ESEA) in 2003. Additionally, the NAMEA is part of the System of Environmental and Economic Accounts (SEEA) as described in UN (2003). In Europe, only Luxembourg and Malta do not compile environmental data and Greece and Slovakia only compile environmental expenditure data. All other European countries follow the 2003 and 2008 guidelines of the ESEA. The countries are supported by the European Environment Agency.
It should also be noted that the introduction of the NAMEA in many countries was only possible because of the political independence of statistical offices in most countries, especially in Europe. Without this independence, a green national income would probably have been introduced because policy-makers prefer striking and simple indicators. Of course, it took more than 20 years to find a compromise in science, but it worked.27
Notes
1 See Aaheim and Nyborg (1995) or Lange (2003) for an overview.
2 Lange (2003).
3 A more detailed analysis of the concept of sustainability is given by Ayres et al. (1998), Gowdy (2004) and Heal (1996)
4 Until now, human capital has not been included in the official national accounts because there is no agreement on how to measure it (some researchers have tried to do this, see Stauvermann (1997) and the cited literature there).
5 See Hartwick (1977) and Solow (1986).
6 The original idea of the SAMs was to incorporate concerns of inequality and poverty in the national accounts and input–output tables. An introduction to the SAM approach is given in Keuning and de Ruijter (1988), Pyatt and Thorbecke (1976), Pyatt and Round (1986) and Alarcon et al. (1991).
7 Duchin and Steenge (1999) give a brief technical overview of input–output analysis with respect to environmental problems.
8 Leontief ’s (1970) analysis of the physical economy can be regarded as the first prototype NAMEA since both systems are characterized by a hybrid structure including both physical as well monetary data (de Haan, 2001, p. 5).
9 See the CBS web page: www.statline.cbs.nl.
10 Of course, most of the sectors are represented in much more detail and follow the Standard Industrial Classification for the most part.
11 The numbers for the environmental themes are aggregated with the help of IPCC conventions. This means, for example, that 1 kg CO2 emissions equals one global warming potential, 1 kg N2O emissions equals 270 global warming potentials and 1 kg CH4 equals 11 global warming potentials.
12 See, for example, the NAMEA table in Keuning et al. (1999, pp. 18–22).
13 The pilot NAMEA in 1993 benefited a great deal from work done on environmental indicators at the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (Adriaanse, 1993).
14 The NAMEA 1995 is given in the appendix of Keuning et al. (1999).
15 An explanation of how to do this is given in Kee and de Haan (2004) and de Haan (2000).
16 For a comparison of the different approaches, see de Haan (1999).
17 See Steenge (1997, 1999).
18 See Adriaanse (1993) and Peskin (1998).
19 Hueting has published more than 75 articles, papers and books in English on this topic. Goodland (2001, pp. 326–331) gives an overview of his work.
20 In the literature (Goodland, 1995) there are several different definitions of sustainability: e.g. weak sustainability, strong sustainability. Hueting defines sustainability as a situation in which vital environmental functions remain available ad infinitum. In Hueting’s view, sustainability can be defined as being scientifically objective (Hueting and Reijnders, 1998; Reijnders, 1996).
21 Steady state and stationary state means a state which is sustainable forever. For details, see Stauvermann (1997).
22 The costs contain the costs of preserving the environment and the costs of removing existing environmental burdens.
23 For example, the models of Weitzman (1976) and of Hartwick (1977), which was built on Solow (1974), are based on very strong assumptions: identical consumer preferences, certain future, no technical change, constant time preferences of the consumers and no distortionary taxes or subsidies. The results of these models break down if we relax these assumptions.
24 See Verbruggen et al. (2001, p. 277). We then envisage a hypothetical sustainable economy with a hypothetical SNI.
25 This study was overseen by a committee chaired by Frank den Butter and was financed by the Dutch ministries of Hans Wijers and Margreeth de Boer.
26 See www.beyond-gdp.eu.
27 See Geerdink and Stauvermann (2009).
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