International Seminar on Natural Capital Accounting, 12-14 November, Beijing, China

The United Nations Statistics Division and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of China in collaboration with the United Nations Environment and European Union jointly organized an International Seminar on Natural Capital Accounting in Beijing, China from 12-14 November. The seminar was organized as part of the Natural Capital Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services (NCAVES) project funded by the European Union and as part of the project on strengthening statistical capacity development in China and the other partnership countries funded by the Chinese Government. 

The seminar serves as an important milestone for NCAVES project in China.  Under the goal of ecological civilization, there is an increasing effort in China to embark on the sustainable development policy to monitor environment progress for the protection of biodiversity and ecosystem. The project will provide technical support to NBS to strengthen the national compilation of natural resource balance sheet on land, forest and water, and pilot ecosystem accounts in both physical and monetary terms in pilot provinces of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Guizhou Province. The project will also conduct scenario analysis, with an objective to evaluate the impacts of different strategies on eco-compensation standards and to inform the sustainability of trans-provincial watershed management for the Xijiang River Basin in Guangxi.

The seminar brought together statisticians and government officials from China and other NCAVES project countries, namely Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa, to facilitate sharing of experiences and lesson learnt on mainstreaming natural capital accounting through the implementation of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EEA). It explored the emerging opportunities for natural capital accounting to support national priorities and discussed accounting principles and methodology in ecosystem accounts based on the SEEA EEA, with a focus on ecosystem valuation and scenario modelling analysis. Early highlights from the project countries on the compilation and application of ecosystem accounts were presented at the Seminar.

The seminar also disseminated recent advances on ecosystem accounting through the SEEA EEA revision process. The conclusion of the seminar supported further collaboration and knowledge sharing among NCAVES project countries to advance the implementation and policy mainstreaming of natural capital accounting.

All meeting documents and presentations can be found on the meeting website at https://seea.un.org/events/international-seminar-natural-capital-accounting