Reasons T P Bhat, Assocham's assistant secretary-general, ``If the idea of creating wealth is at the cost of national environment, the process will never be everlasting and sooner than later, the damage done to the environment is going to reflect on the quality of wealth.'' He adds, ``All possible means to conserve environment should become an important policy goal. Environment conservation will be able to compete with traditional policy goals if it can be represented in numbers. This is the reason why we need an environment index.''

For arriving at an environment index, the obvious course to chart is to take all environmental services as well as environmental damages into account. The economic value of environmental services in the world was estimated at $33 trillion in 1998, which is almost twice the global GNP of $18 trillion. The services provided by environment to mankind includes climate, waste treatment, soil formation, water regulation, nutrient cycling, raw materials, genetic resources, erosion control and sediment control. Along with these services, while measuring a country's production, there is need to take into consideration environmental losses, emphasises the Assocham paper.

Environmental costs assume great importance since their magnitude is equally monumental. For example, in India, the World Bank has pegged environmental damage at over $9.7 billion per year, or 4.5 per cent of the GDP (1992 values) in terms of health and productivity impacts. The figure includes the health impacts of water pollution, agricultural output loss due to soil degradation, health impacts of air pollution, loss of livestock carrying capacity due to rangeland degradation, cost of deforestation, and loss of international tourism. So, the Green GNP would be conventional GNP adjusted for environmental costs and benefits. ``Calculating both implicitly defines an environmental index,'' notes the paper.

Apart from calling for an environment index, the chamber has also called upon every individual industrial unit, small or large, to own up to the responsibility of conserving the environment by adopting upgraded technology to produce goods with zero pollution.

Besides, Assocham has not only called upon the government to encourage new and additional investments in preventive technologies and promote environmentally sound technology cooperation and transfer, but also upon the private sector to adopt all necessary measures to create a clean, unpolluted environment. Obviously, the environmental index makes sense only if we become eco-friendly in the truest sense.