SEEA (System of Environmental-Economic Accounting) is a project coordinated by the UN Division of Statistics with the goal of providing an accounting standard for measuring the environment in relation to economic and human activities in general, approved by the UN in 2012. It incorporates publications from TEEB Synthesis mentioned in the TEEB section, which preceded the launch of SEEA, highlighting the need for global standards for the economy of natural capital, as well as adapting these standardizations to measuring the natural and total wealth of a state.
According to the official website description, “The System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) is a framework that integrates economic and environmental data to provide a more comprehensive and multiple view of the relationship between the economy and the surrounding environment, the stocks and changes in environmental assets, and benefits for humanity. It contains the concepts, definitions, classifications, accounting rules, and standard international tables designed to produce comparable international statistics and accounts. The SEEA framework follows an accounting structure similar to the System of National Accounts (SNA). The framework uses concepts, definitions, and classifications compatible with SNA to facilitate the integration of environmental and economic statistics. SEEA is a multi-functional system that generates a wide range of statistics, accounts, and indicators with many potential analytical applications. It is a flexible system that can be adapted to the political priorities and needs of the countries, ensuring at the same time a common framework, concepts, terms, and definitions.”
SEEA is a system that generates a wide range of statistics, accounts, and indicators. It is a flexible system that can be adapted to the political priorities and needs of the countries, while ensuring a common framework, concepts, terms, and definitions.
The core concept emphasizes that SEEA allows the elaboration of indicators and the analysis of the link between the economy and the environment, and “facilitates better-informed decision-making. The accounts system offers a means to monitor the pressures exerted by the economy on the environment and can help explore how the economy and society respond regarding environmental protection and resource management expenditures. SEEA does not propose specific indicators, but rather a multifunctional holistic information system that can generate a wide range of statistics and indicators with various potential analytical applications.”
Partha Dasgupta, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Cambridge, presents SEEA as simply the new “normal” economy system, which finally takes into account a more detailed contribution of the surrounding environment, of natural capital, which we are used to taking for granted, a “asset” with zero cost (compared to the old one which counted, for example, roads, constructions, calculators, and nature only by products—wood, fish). In his opinion, nature is part of the production structure and it is necessary to give “approximate values where there were none before, values as accurate as possible,” to include not only tangible services but also the “many intangible, hidden, possibly unobservable, but which exist and which we use without being aware that they carry a value, a value that is often omitted from the economic balance sheet of the owner, of the private environment, or of the governments.” An example is knowing the value when nature decomposes waste and residues by microorganisms, reducing pollution, detoxifying, and separating dangerous elements for man into primary materials/elements returning them naturally to the nutrient or sedimentary cycle, etc., or to better measure the real cost of a pesticide, which when used destroys these microorganisms.
SEEA focuses on methodologies, capacity building, and coordination, and supporting these are a series of framework publications, the most notable being under the joint aegis of the UN, the European Commission, OECD, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Methodologically, this system is based on three parts: first, the SEEA Central Framework, the document adopted by the UN Statistical Commission as the first international standard for ecological-economic accounting in 2012 and published in its final version in February 2014, building on older projects (SEEA-2003 and SEEA-1993), and being an endeavor characterized by constant multi-year revisions, covering 3 main domains: 1. Environmental flows (the flow of natural, produced, and residual inputs between the surrounding environment and the economy and within the economy, both in physical and monetary terms); 2. Environmental asset stocks (individual, such as water or energy assets, and how these change over a reporting period, due to economic activity and natural processes, both in physical and monetary terms); and 3. Economic activity related to the environment (monetary flows associated with economic activities related to the environment, including expenditures for environmental protection and resource management, as well as the production of “environmental goods and services”).
The Central Framework is completed by the SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting, which highlights a synthesis of current knowledge in the field of ecosystem accounting and “follows the changes in ecosystems and links these changes to economic activity and other human activities.”
Finally, a series of other materials known as SEEA Applications and Extensions complete the SEEA database with examples showing “how the information can be utilized in decision-making, policy revision, and formulation,” alongside dedicated subsystems for specific sectors such as water, energy, sustainable development, and the green economy, sub-domains for which there are additional specialized resources, facilitating links between accounting experts and niche specialists, “in terms of terminology, concepts, clarifications, and reporting.”
SEEA follows a flexible and modular implementation strategy in the states that have joined the system, recommending members to implement accounts of personal relevance, as well as global assessments (the latest in 2017) or guidelines and diagnostic tools. The system also offers a package of e-learning courses, part of an extended UNSTAT package, for those who wish to specialize in the field.
SEEA is also based on information, data, or knowledge obtained through the efforts of TEEB, WAVES, etc., and is correlated with CICES – the International Classification of Ecosystem Services.
