system of environmental economic accounts seea
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System of Environmental Economic Accounts SEEA The measurement framework for the environment and its interactions with the economy. Peter Harper Chair UNCEEA Deputy Australian Statistician Australian Bureau of Statistics. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
System of Environmental Economic Accounts
SEEAThe measurement framework for the environment and its interactions with the economy
Peter HarperChair UNCEEA
Deputy Australian StatisticianAustralian Bureau of Statistics
What do we care about?… and do our targets reflect this?
‘What we measure affects what we do; and if our measurements are flawed, decisions may be distorted. Choices between promoting GDP and protecting the environment may be false choices once environmental degradation is appropriately included in our measurement of economic performance. So too, we often draw inferences about what are good policies by looking at what policies have promoted economic growth; but if our metrics of performance are flawed, so too may be the inferences that we draw.’
Stiglitz et al
‘A country could exhaust its mineral resources, cut down its forests, erode its soil, pollute its aquifers, and hunt its wildlife to extinction, but measured income would not be affected as these assets disappeared.’
Repetto et al `
Information
Data users
Audiences for information… Indicators and Accounts
Data items
SEEAStandard tables
Supplementary tables
Indicators
Decision makers & wider public
Managers and analysts
Researchers
Yes
Analysis
Research
Advice
Headline indicators
Indicators on specific subjects or industries
Is there an issue?
Information is vital…and it needs to be integrated
• The economy impacts on the environment and the environment impacts on the economy
• To understand these linkages we need to integrate environmental and economic information
• This is the explicit purpose of the SEEA framework
Problem: Information silos
Data developed to answer one particular question or problem
Difficult to figure out if all information is included
Not always easy to see the whole picture, or how it relates to other things
Solution: Integrated information
Help to make sense of the larger picture
Help to identify pieces that are missing
Can make connections to other statistics - especially economic statistics
Linking environmental and socio-economic data is essential for policymakers
• enables analysis of the impact of economic policies on the environment and vice versa
• provides a quantitative basis for policy design• identifies the socio-economic drivers, pressures, impacts and
responses affecting the environment• supports greater precision for environmental regulations and
resource management strategies• provides indicators that express the relationships between the
environment and the economy
Biophysical
Socio-economic
DPSIR framework
Using a standard is very important…
• Organising information within the SEEA framework ensures– Consistency (with existing standards eg SNA) – Completeness (no gaps, or at least known gaps)– Comparability (across time and space)– Accountability (industry, governments, h/holds)
The SEEA standardDeveloped by UNSD, NSOs, Eurostat, OECD, IMF, World Bank
1993 Handbook – satellite to SNA 2003 Updated SEEA handbook – manual of best practices2006 UNSC decided to elevate SEEA to an international standard
2012 SEEA – The Central Framework Chapter 1 – IntroductionChapter 2 – Accounting structureChapter 3 – Physical supply and use Chapter 4 – Monetary transactionsChapter 5 – Asset accountsChapter 6 – Sequence of accounts, aggregates and indicators
2013 SEEA – Experimental Ecosystem Accounts 2013 SEEA – Applications and Policy Uses
Subsystems: SEEA-Water, SEEA-Energy, SEEA-Material flows (MFA), SEEA-Agriculture
The SEEA central framework incorporates four types of accounts.
1. Flow accounts: supply and use tables for products, natural resources, ecosystem inputs and residuals or wastes from economic activities. – physical (e.g. GL of water) and/or monetary values
2. Stock accounts for environmental assets: natural resources, land and ecosystems. – physical and/or monetary values
3. Activity / purpose accounts that explicitly identify environmental transactions already existing in the SNA. – e.g. Environmental Protection Expenditure (EPE) accounts
4. Environmentally adjusted accounts that adjust SNA economic accounts to reflect the impact of economic activity on the environment.– e.g. for environmental depletion and degradation
Ecosystem servicesEcosystem services are “fundamental life-support services upon which human civilization depends”, and can be direct or indirect. Broad examples include:• Regulating (climate, floods, nutrient balance, water filtration)• Provisioning (food, medicine, fur, minerals)• Cultural (science, spiritual, ceremonial, recreation, aesthetic)• Supporting (nutrient cycling, photosynthesis, soil formation)
Take home messages…1. Integrating environmental and economic information
is vital for informed, sophisticated decision-making2. SEEA is an internationally recognised standard
explicitly designed for this purpose3. SEEA is an accounting standard, not an ideology4. SEEA enables a wide range of issues to be studied,
including sustainability, well-being and green growth