Natural Capital Accounting in Support of Land Degradation Neutrality- Side Event CoP14 India

The event entitled Natural Capital Accounting in support of Land Degradation Neutrality is a side event which will take place on 4 September 2019 within the CoP14 of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).  The event will focus on how the SEEA can inform policy decisions related to land degradation.

The SEEA is a statistical framework that brings together economic and environmental information using agreed-upon concepts, definitions, classifications and accounting rules to produce internationally comparable statistics. The SEEA frameworks allows for measuring and accounting for natural capital which can inform policy decisions on, inter alia, how to reduce land degradation and undertake land restoration initiatives. This event will focus on the SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting: 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 using a spatially explicit approach. 

The objective of the session is to provide an overview of the SEEA-EEA, and to illustrate how the various types of accounts can contribute directly to UNCCD assessments. For example, accounts can be used to measure progress towards achieving land degradation neutrality and the data generated can be integrated into decisions on how to conserve, sustainably manage and restore land in the context of land use planning.

The session will provide an overview of the different sets of accounts e.g. on ecosystem extent, condition, ecosystem services supply and use, thematic accounts such as on land and carbon, illustrated by country examples. The session will disseminate experiences gained as part of the EU funded Natural Capital Accounting and valuation of Ecosystem Services project, in which Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa, are piloting the development of ecosystem accounts (https://seea.un.org/home/Natural-Capital-Accounting-Project), as well as other NCA initiatives such as the World Bank lead WAVES (Wealth Accounting and the Valuation of Ecosystem Services) programme (https://www.wavespartnership.org) and the Gabarone Declaration of Sustainability in Africa (GDSA) (http://www.gaboronedeclaration.com)

The session’s contribution to the outcomes on COP14 include: detailing how specific indicators (such as SDG 15.3.1 on land degradation can be derived from the accounts; sharing country experiences on how policy decisions on land use planning can be informed by the accounts; enhancing collaboration between countries in the development of internationally comparable statistical systems on land degradation and restoration.

The session is organized jointly by the United Nations Statistics Division, UN Environment and GDSA in close collaboration with UNCCD member countries participating in the NCAVES project or GDSA, and the European Union.