Expert Meeting on Aligning SEEA and GEP

There is an increasing effort at the international and national level to develop an integrated information system to measure the linkage and interdependence between nature, economy and society for sustainable development. At the international level, the development of SEEA and the adoption of the SEEA Central Framework in 2012 brought environmental data and information into the realm of official statistics at the par with economic statistics allowing to go beyond GDP. The SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EEA), building on the Central Framework, constitutes an integrated statistical framework for organizing biophysical data, measuring ecosystem services, tracking changes in ecosystem assets and linking this information to economic and other human activity.  The SEEA serves as the underlying statistical framework for natural capital accounting.

In China, there is an ongoing effort to develop a monitoring framework to measure sustainability. Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP) is a methodological framework developed by the Chinese scientists that aims to measure natural capital and the ecological contributions to the economy in monetary teams, with an objective to evaluate the effectiveness and progress of conservation effects and policy.  GEP is being considered at the par with GDP, providing a summary information on the performance on the environment.  GEP is increasingly being accepted as a measure to evaluate the performance of government at the provincial level with respect to the environment.

SEEA-EEA and GEP are largely compatible and there is an ongoing effort to bring alignment of the two frameworks. Considering also on-going efforts by NBS to develop guidelines on the implementation of the SEEA EEA in China based on the experience of Guangxi and Guizhou and the plan to develop guidelines for GEP compilation, discussion to align the two frameworks is very time.

The discussions will bring together the SEEA and GEP experts to foster technical exchange, with an objective to resolve technical difference, to develop a strategy to bring alignment, integrtion and common approach of the two frameworks to advance natural capital accounting at the global level and in China