NSO India looks to expand coverage of SEEA accounts

After the successful implementation of the NCAVES project in India which led to the development of the Strategy for Environmental Economic Accounts in India (the Strategy),  the NSO, India is constantly endeavoring towards implementing SEEA with widened coverage involving various agencies, institutes and departments both at the National and Sub-National level.

NSO, India has identified ‘Ocean Accounts’ as one of the priority areas of work in the Strategy.  Aligning with the Strategy, as a first step NSO, India organized a Brain-Storming Session on Ocean Accounting in India on 4 November 2022 in collaboration with the Ministry of Earth Sciences at the National Centre for Coastal Research, Chennai, Tamil Nadu. This session brought together experts from several agencies, research institutes and academia. The session provided an efficient knowledge-sharing platform and helped in understanding the data availability that was otherwise scattered in silos. As a next step, a consultation with all the coastal states were decided during the seminar.

As a second step NSO, India organized two-day State level capacity development workshop during 17-18 November 2022 at Dehradun, Uttarakhand.   This was the first of its kind and helped to create awareness about the SEEA and the Environment Accounts at a sub-national level. The workshop was organized primarily for the States of the Northern Region where representatives from Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Union Territories of Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir and Chandigarh participated. The attendees were largely from State Directorate of Economics & Statistics (DES), State Forest Departments, State Planning Department, State Pollution Control Department and State Fisheries Board.

 

Article contributed by MOSPI, India