The earth governs our lives through its rotation and revolution, its seasons, and the ebb and flow of tides. What we eat and how we dress depends on where we are between the poles. It is topography that marks us as hills people or those of the plains, deserts or coasts. Therefore, it’s extremely important to reflect on what we are doing to our one and only planet. There were times when we could be selfish and think only of ourselves. That time is past.

Every country is obsessed with GDP or gross domestic product which is the market value of goods and services produced by labour and property located in that country during a year or part of it. The prosperity of a country is measured by the size of its GDP and its per person income. The world’s GDP in 2022, after accounting for inflation, was nearly $90 trillion, according to the World Bank, up from about $51 trillion in 2002.

The question, however, is at what cost? What important resources are we expending to boost GDP? This is where the idea of green GDP comes in. Green GDP counts the value produced in a country taking into account the environmental costs. Those costs are hidden and may not be paid by the producers of goods and services. But they cannot be ignored for the price of is paid by society at large.