The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has released its Strategy for Environmental Economic Accounts 2026-2030, a five-year roadmap to measure India’s natural resources alongside conventional economic data.

The document, released on Wednesday, succeeds the 2022-2026 strategy and lists about 10 priority areas including forests, water, land, soil, minerals, carbon stock, biodiversity and pollination services.

The ministry said natural resources form the backbone of the economy and growth without environmental accounting can cause serious degradation.

A notable addition is pollination accounting. MoSPI published its first monetary pollination services account earlier this year to value the ecosystem service that supports agriculture.

The accounts follow the UN’s System of Environmental-Economic Accounting and can feed into around 40 global indicators across nine Sustainable Development Goals.

India is among a handful of countries building full environmental-economic accounts under the UN framework. The data is expected to guide policy on forests, water use and climate action in the coming years.