Capacity Building Workshop on Ocean Accounting in Samoa: GIS Workshop on Mangrove Statistics

The Capacity Building Workshop on Ocean Accounting took place in Apia, Samoa from 12 to 14 March 2024. The Workshop, co-organized by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Samoa, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and Global Ocean Account Partnership (GOAP), aimed to enhance the capacity of Samoan governmental officials, as well as relevant stakeholders in using remote sensing data to compile ocean accounts for sustainable ocean planning.

Ocean accounting is a framework that extends accounting concepts and principles of the System of Environmental Economic Accounting Central Framework (SEEA-CF) and SEEA Ecosystem Accounting (EA) to the ocean sphere. Focusing on mangrove statistics, the workshop offered participants the opportunity to learn how to produce mangrove cover maps and statistics using spatial data. It also demonstrated how environmental data and ocean accounts could be linked to support policy and decision making.

The workshop is a part of the project UN SDG Joint Fund project “Building Forward Better by Safeguarding Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services” for Samoa.

More information here.

Article contributed by ESCAP