The Eighth Meeting of the ASEAN Working Group on Environmental Economics (AWGEE) was held on 14-15 July 1998 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The meeting was chaired by Malaysia and was attended by delegates from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore. Thailand, Vietnam and a representative from the ASEAN Secretariat.

AWGEE is one of the Six Working Groups set up by the ASEAN Senior Officials on Environment (ASOEN) with the following objectives:

1. Initiate activities that will make use of natural resource and environmental accounting studies and approaches;

2. Initiate studies on development of environmental and trade policies which are supportive to the principles of sustainable development;

3. Establish mechanisms that encourage government and private sectors to adopt appropriate environmental standards;

4. Enhance collaboration with international bodies overseeing the implementation of international agreements and cooperations; and

5. Develop strategic programmes of action that will strengthen the role and participation of major groups on environment management and decision making.

The Meeting reviewed the Final Report of the Environmental and Natural Resources Accounting for ASEAN Countries (ENRA) project, which was completed in May 1998. The objectives of the project are:

To apply and develop a practical accounting system for natural and environmental resources which can be implemented, individually or collectively, by ASEAN countries; to study the market structure of natural resources in order to determine a basis for pricing policy, and to identify economic activities which cause adverse changes to the environment, and to study the costs of preserving environmental quality.

The main recommendations of the project are:

1. Pursue concerted efforts towards addressing common problems such as deforestation, over fishing and global warming;

2. Explore more policy applications in developing market based instruments;

3. Collaborate statistical development:

4. Build capacity in the region for in-house conduct of environmental accounting; and

5. Develop protocols for data generation, sharing and use.

Other matters discussed at the Eighth AWGEE Meeting were:

1. Review of Progress on Issues Discussed at the Seventh AWGEE Meeting;

2. Matters arising from the 8th ASOEN Meeting;

3. ASEAN-UNDP ASP-5: Sub-programme on Trade and Environment Training Seminars; and

4. Hanoi Plan of Action to implement the ASEAN Vision 2020.