Key Details
MoSPI’s Strategy for Environmental Economic Accounts in India 2026–2030 extends its earlier 2022–26 roadmap. It sets priorities for improving accounts India already produces and developing work where coverage remains limited.
What the accounts cover: Priority areas include forests, biodiversity, pollination, minerals, carbon stocks, water, land, soil and environment-related spending and investment.
How the data will improve: MoSPI proposes longer time series, more timely results, common definitions, stronger national and state-level datasets, and validated use of remote sensing.
How the accounts will be used: The strategy calls for policy-relevant indicators, more accessible publications and closer links between environmental accounts and government decisions.
State participation: 18 States and Union Territories had constituted interdepartmental groups on environment accounting when the strategy was prepared.
India Is Expanding an Existing System
India has published EnviStats India: Environment Accounts since 2018. Its accounts have covered, among other subjects, forest extent and condition, water and mineral assets, biodiversity, energy, waste and services supplied by ecosystems. A pollination-services account is listed for 2026. The new strategy therefore marks a next phase: improving the continuity and comparability of this work while extending its scope.
The earlier roadmap initiated work on subjects including material flows, energy and oceans. The 2026–30 strategygives greater attention to gaps in natural-resource and ecosystem accounts, as well as to whether the resulting information can be used in policy.
A Forest or Water Account Shows More Than a Headline Total
A single figure for forest area cannot show whether forest condition is changing or which services a forest provides. Similarly, a water account can bring together information on stocks, use and change over time. The strategy identifies further work on these distinctions across forests, minerals, land and soil.
It also places pollination, biodiversity and carbon stocks within the accounting agenda. These subjects matter because economic activity depends on natural systems whose condition is not fully visible in conventional production figures. MoSPI proposes common methods and better-coordinated data so findings from different agencies and periods can be compared.
The Roadmap Links Environmental Data with Economic Statistics
The strategy uses the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA), an international framework that organises information on natural assets, resource use and ecosystem services in forms compatible with economic accounts. It also notes the closer treatment of natural resources in the 2025 System of National Accounts.
This does not mean India has adopted a new measure of “green GDP”. The immediate task is to produce reliable, connected accounts that can show, for example, how a resource stock changes as it is used — and make that evidence available alongside economic statistics.
Policy Relevance
Resource decisions: Comparable accounts could help governments examine extraction, depletion and conservation together, particularly for water, forests and minerals, rather than relying on separate totals produced for different purposes.
State planning: Environmental conditions and resource pressures vary sharply by location. Stronger state-level accounts could make national statistics more useful for decisions on land use, water management and ecosystem protection.
Public spending: Accounts of environment-related expenditure and investment could connect information about the condition of natural assets with what governments and other actors spend to protect or restore them. The strategy sets a direction for this work; it does not itself report that these policy effects have been achieved.
Follow the Full Report Here: MoSPI, Strategy for Environmental Economic Accounts in India 2026–2030