Growing the Wealth of the Poor - World Resources Institute

abroad. In order to capture a country’s investment in futuregrowth and development, Adjusted Net Savings is included inthis table. Adjusted Net Savings—also known as GenuineSavings or Green GDP—calculates the “true” rate of savings ofa country’s economy by taking into account human capital,depletion of natural resources, and the damages of pollution inaddition to standard economic savings measures.Table 4: Institutions and Governance measures, atthe national level, the governing conditions that need to be inplace for sustainable development: personal and politicalfreedom, functioning property markets, responsible governmentspending, and access to information. Many of these indicatorsare inherently subjective and can only be captured through anindex calculation. Therefore, rigid country comparisons ofindices on freedom, corruption, and digital access are discouraged.Unfortunately, many of the enabling governanceconditions for scaling up the environmental assets of the poorcannot be measured comprehensively on a national level. Specifically,no data exist to measure security of tenure, access toresources, or the distribution of land and other resources toindividuals, communities, and the state.General NotesThe World Resources 2008 data tables present informationfor 155 countries. These countries were selected from the191 official member states of the United Nations based on theirpopulation levels, land area, and the availability of data. Manymore countries are included in the EarthTrends online database.Country groupings are based on lists developed by the Food andAgriculture Organization of the United Nations (for developed anddeveloping countries), the World Bank (for low-, medium-,and high-income countries), and the World Resources Institute(for regional classifications). A full listing is available online athttp://earthtrends.wri.org/searchable_db/general_notes.Comprehensive technical notes are available in the pagesfollowing each data table. In addition, several general notes applyto all the data tables (except where noted otherwise):■ “..” in a data column signifies that data are not available or arenot relevant (for example, country status has changed, as withthe former Soviet republics).■ Negative values are shown in parentheses.■ 0 appearing in a table indicates a value of either zero or less thanone half the unit of measure used in the table; (0) indicates a valueless than zero and greater than negative one half.■ Except where identified by a footnote, regional totals are calculatedusing regions designated by the World Resources Institute.Totals represent either a summation or a weighted average ofavailable data. Weighted averages of ratios use the denominatorof the ratio as the weight. Regional totals are published only ifmore than 85 percent of the relevant data are available for aparticular region. Missing values are not imputed.■ The regional totals published here use data from all 222 countriesand territories in the World Resources/EarthTrends database(some of these countries are omitted from the current tables).Regional summations and weighted averages calculated with onlythe 155 countries listed in these data tables will therefore notmatch the published totals.■ Except where identified with a footnote, world totals arepresented as calculated by the original data source (which mayinclude countries not listed in WRI’s database); original sourcesare listed after each data table.■ When available data are judged too weak to allow for anymeaningful comparison across countries, the data are not shown.Please review the technical notes for further consideration ofdata reliability.205