Comments on the 2006 IFEN Report on the State of the French Environment

There has long been regret that national accounting systems only cover commercial transactions and not free goods and services, and certainly not “negative externalities”, hence no account is taken of the natural environment, efforts to protect or assess its value, or threats to it as a result of human activities. This concern has generated several initiatives with varying degrees of success, among them the report on the “state of the environment” issued every four years by the Institut français de l’environnement (IFEN), along the lines of other national and European initiatives. Thierry Lavoux has studied the 2006 edition of the report for Futuribles and offers a brief commentary on its contents, virtues and limits.