The Environmental Audit Committee has written to both the Chancellor and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to ask for estimates of greenhouse gas emissions to be published alongside GDP figures to indicate whether economic growth and slashing emissions can be achieved together.
This follows the committee’s inquiries in February and March into “Aligning the UK’s economic goals with environmental sustainability” and, in particular, how the reliance on GDP as a sole measure of prosperity can hide the climate and ecological impacts of economic growth.
The letters highlight in general the isolation of climate and ecological data reporting from fiscal reporting and how a true picture of how the country is progressing in all aspects of the economy, the environment and net zero targets is impossible unless integrated reporting is provided.
Much is made of the failure to implement the recommendations of the “Dasgupta” review into our economy’s reliance and impact on the natural world. This was a review commissioned by the Chancellor and had these headline messages.
The two letters are similar in content but the one to the Chancellor provides the main thrust of the committee’s recommendations.