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Long abstract:

Since the 1970s and the development of environmental statistics, national accounting has been repeatedly confronted with the question of integrating the environment into its accounting framework. In France, this issue was pioneered by the Interministerial Commission for the Accounting of the Natural Patrimony (CICPN) between 1978 and 1986. Our work is based on an original study of the archives of André Vanoli, National Accountant at INSEE (French statistical office), who chaired the CICPN's 'Methods' group. The task of this group was to coordinate the Commission's methodological work in order to explore the links between an original information system on natural patrimony and the conceptual framework of national accounts. We propose to trace back the questions raised by this work: How and why should the environment be constituted as a natural patrimony? How does this version of the environment come into tension with the traditional concepts of national accounting (patrimony, agent accounts, temporality, spatiality, monetary units, etc.), and what solutions are statisticians considering to make national accounting greener? This presentation invites us to follow the fragile co-construction of an environment seen as patrimony and an accounting framework that needs to be recomposed to become greener.