Natural Resources And Environmental Accounts

The ONS recently published the UK's environmental accounts for 2011 and they are described as satellite accounts to the main national accounts. They provide information on a wide range of things to do with atmospheric emissions, natural resources such as lands cover, oil and gas reserves, forestry, trade in basic materials, physical flows and monetary accounts related to the industrial, commercial and domestic sectors.

The effects of our activity on the environment have been an important policy issue for the last 40-50 years. There is growing concern about the impact of economic activity on both the global and local environment and also recognition that economic growth and human welfare depend on the enviroment. Raw materials and energy for goods and services, the absorption of waste, basic life support roles and amenities such as landscape are all services provided by the environment.

Environmental accounts provide data on the impact of economic activity on the environment, resource use and the taxes and subsidies associted with them and are sepearated into three dimensions: natural resources, physical flows and monetary. Natural resources accounts include oil and gas reserves, land cover and forestry.

Proven oil reserves at the end of 2009 were 378m tonnes. There has been a transfer of 38m tonnes from probable to proven reserves. Maximum oil reserves (proven, probable and possible) decreased by 19m tonnes to 1,111m tonnes in 2009. There are estimated to be hundreds of millions of tonnes of undiscovered recoverable oil reserves. Oil and gas reserves were worth an estimated value of £182.4bn in 2009, down 1.9% since 2008.

Total land cover in Great Britain is 22.6m hectares. Various types of grassland are the habitats that have increased between 1998 and 2007. Changes have also taken place in woodlands which have increased, arable and horticulture, which have decreased and bracken broad habitat which has also decreased.

The total area covered by woodland was 3.1m hectares or 12.7% of UK land area and is the highest since records began. The woodland area at the end of 2010 is 2.5 times tha area covered in 1924 (when records began). The area of new planting and restocking in 2010-11 was 22,700 hectares. Broadleaved species important for the expansion of the area of native woodland was 82% of new planting but only 27% of restocking.

There was an 8.4% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions in 2009 compared with 2008 bringing the total down by 58.1m tonnes to 636m tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

Material productivity is used to assess progress towards sustainable development by dividing GDP by Domestic Material Consumption (DMC). The environmental accounts show that between 1990 and 2009 material productivity increrased and the trend indicates that material use is falling in relation to economic activity and supports evidence that suggests that economic growth has decoupled from material use since 1990. Some of the environmental impacts associated with consumption may have been transferred abroad because the level of imports has generally risen over that period.

More Green Belt Statistics UK

The latest Green belt statistics from the DCLG tell us that on 31 March 2010 there was an estimated 1,639,560 hectares of designated Green Belt land in England. This amounts to about 13% of the total land area of England. The designated Green Belt area of England in March 2009 has been revised and the estimation is now 1,639,650 hectares which amounts to an increase of 810 hectares on the estimate published by DCLG in April 2009. The difference is due to the correcting, improving of measurements of local authorities using digitised data from geographical information systems as opposed to paper maps and Positional Accuracy improvements by the Ordnance Survey. The Comprehensive Spending Review resulted in Departmental Strategic Objectives on Planning which relate to net change in the national area of Green Belt land. The indicator used for this is sustaining the level of Green Belt nationally measured regionally. There has been a net real decreas decrease of 80 hectares between April 2009 and March 2010. The difference is due to new plans being adopted in South Cambridgeshire (70 hectares) and the Mole Valley (10 hectares).

Green Belt policy comprises five purposes for including land in designated Green Belt areas. They are to check urban sprawl, to prevent the merging of neighbouring towns, the safeguard the countryside from encroachment, the preservation of the setting and character of historic towns and to help urban regeneration by encouraging the recycling of derelict and other urban land. Green Belt land once identified can then provide the urban population with opportunities of access to the open countryside and outdoor sport and leisure, the retention and enhancement of landscapes near inhabited areas, improvement of damaged and derelict land, nature conservation and the retaining of land in agricultural, forestry and other related uses.