There are various instruments: the estimation of effect on the environment (VIA) of public and private projects; strategic environmental estimation (VAS) for use of community funds; the institution of dedicated administrations, with respective statements and action plans; the development of sector statistics, until the "Local environmental reporting", which is ever more widespread for cities, and today has its maximum expression in the Annual Report on the State of the Environment, discussed in the ministry establishing law 349/86. Territorial environmental certifications and experimenting must be considered at the same level to apply on territory situations the EMAS regulation (voluntary and verified procedure of environmental management). All practical examples born and indicated by Rio’s Agenda XXI, enclosing a greater ambition: that of laying on the field a synthetic and permanent evaluation tool for sustainability. Thus we arrive at a more precise definition: a collection of environment related data, analytic though it might be, can still not be called environmental accounting.

The sense that is given to this ever since the Rio Agenda, is something wider and more pervasive: not just an information system for environmental policies, but a generalised and synthetic technique to support all decisions. This is the reason why it acquires a strong and transversal worth with respect to policies in all fields. Its general value lies in the fact that it remains an attending tool. It is not in itself, nor should be, a dirigiste principle, an authoritarian plan for sustainability. It is not an ideological or political choice in itself: for or against environment.

It wants to simply be an information system to be incorporated in the decisional circuit. It is an antidote to those black holes that are so often found in economy and finance tools. For the very reason that sustainable development is a long term objective, the tools to achieve it cannot be made to wait. To organise responsibility, to start providing local administrations, Regions and Nations with the necessary "toolbox" to test efficacy and efficiency of sustainability policies, a law was presented in the Senate in ’97 concerning public environment accounting.

The legislative measure  - drawn up by the Environment commission in cooperation with the Cnel and signed by all parliamentary groups (except for Lega), provides for the obligation for Municipalities, Provinces, Regions and the State to use environmental statements (drawn up on the basis of “green” accounts: how much water less, how much building land more, how much solid waste in a year in that municipality) as well as the traditional economical and financial statements. The constant and widespread activity of drawing up and approving environmental statements, together and contextually with ordinary statements, has three functions: - an information function, because it brings specific knowledge into decisional synthesis, targeted and susceptible to use; - a transparency function, because it imposes on deciders to tell themselves and the public the ecological truth on their territory and operation context; a truth that is not all enclosed in prices and monetary values; - a function of acceptance of responsibility, because deciders cannot elude the analysis of environmental trends in the context of reference.

October.2001

Cnel (In Italian)