Latest SEEA news

23 July 2020

One of the major outcomes of the 15th Meeting of the UN Committee of Experts on Environmental-Economic Accounting (UNCEEA) was the Committee’s support for aligning public and private sector approaches to accounting for the environment and ecosystems. 

30 December 2023

In 2023, UNEP, in close collaboration with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), revised the

29 December 2023

The objective of the DGI is to encourage economies to provide data to assist policymakers in addressing the most relevant policy needs and filling critical data gaps.  The DGI-3 focus in filing the data gaps in addressing climate change, financial innovation, and inclusive growth.

22 December 2023

On 19 December 2023, Eurostat launched a data collection on ecosystem extent accounts for countries that are part of the European Statistical System (ESS).

18 December 2023

A side event on “Integrating Natural Capital Accounting and Climate Change” was organized by the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) during the UN Climate Change Conference COP28 in Dubai on Sunday, 3 December 2023.

01 December 2023

An “Inter-regional workshop on climate change: The contribution of Supreme Audit Institutions” was jointly organized by the Federal Court of Accounts of Brazil, the General Comptroller of Chile, and UNDESA in Santiago (Chile) on 23-25 October 2023.

09 October 2023

In conjunction with the second African Natural Capital Accounting Policy Forum, the UN Statisticas Division (UNSD) organized a Regional Training Workshop on an Accounting Approach to Climate Change Policy on 4-5 September in Nairobi, Kenya.   Climate change is one of the most pressing policy issues for many African countries given its wide-ranging impacts on well-being.

06 October 2023

The African Natural Capital Accounting Policy Forum convened a diverse group of more than 120 government representatives from national statistical office and various agencies and ministries hailing from 30 countries across the African continent.  The forum, which took place from 6th to 7th September 2023 in Nairobi, Kenya,  yielded the Nairobi Declaration Statement and Call to Action as its most significant outcome.

02 October 2023

In this article we present the latest updates on ocean accounts contributed by the Global Ocean Accounts Partnership (GOAP) 

16 June 2023

In April 2023, the UN Statistics Division and UN Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific, with support of the Government of Japan, held a regional training workshop in Chiba on using the SEEA in support of climate chagne policy.

12 April 2023

Statistical Measures Beyond GDP was the topic of this year High-level Forum on Official Statistics, organized every year at the margins of the UN Statistical Commission.

06 April 2023

The 8th Joint OECD/UNECE Seminar on the Implementation of SEEA was held at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, from 13-15 March 2023. English-Russian interpretation was provided.

03 April 2023

In March 2023, UNEP published the Compiler for Economy-Wide Material Flow Accounts. The EW-MFA Compiler was developed by UNEP in consultation with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to support countries in building Economy-Wide Material Flow Accounts. 

02 September 2022

In order to support the uptake of the SEEA EA in Africa, a training programme on the ARIES for SEEA was held in Kigali, Rwanda from 18-22 July 2022. 

14 June 2022

As part of the NCAVES project, in parallel to the development of national level ecosystem accounts, a detailed and comprehensive set of ecosystem extent, condition and ecosystem services accounts have been piloted in India at the subnational level for the State of Karnataka.

15 March 2022

On 23 February, more than 120 participants joined the virtual side event of the 53rd Session of the UN Statistical Commission, “Closing Climate Change Data Gaps: A New G20 Data Gaps Initiative”.

15 March 2022

This high-level side event brought together the statistical and biodiversity communities  to discuss the role of national statistical offices on biodiversity monitoring.

15 December 2021

The Group on Earth Observation (GEO) held its annual GEO Week from November 23rd to 26th, bringing together representatives and experts from over 100 countries around the world to discuss the role of Earth observation (EO) in achieving ambitious global targets.

15 December 2021

Early next year, the 53rd UN Statistical Commission will take place from 1-4 March 2022. The Commission provides an opportunity for the UNCEEA to inform the wider statistical community of the progress it has made over the past year and what lies ahead.

12 October 2021

UNSD has released two case studies which assess alignment between existing private sector natural capital accounting approaches and the SEEA. The case studies focus on a Holcim subsidiary in India and a Holcim quarry site in Spain.

07 October 2021

The use of GDP has been criticized since its inception given its shortcomings when it comes to the environment. While the creation of "green GDP" failed to take off in the 1990s, the international community has made a new start in integrating the environment into GDP.


 

05 October 2021

On Monday 4 October 2021, South Africa launched the publication Accounts for Protected Areas, 1900 to 2020.  The publication was issued by Statistics South Africa in collaboration with the South African National Biodiversity Institute and the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment.

17 September 2021

On 10 September 2021, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres released the “Our Common Agenda” report, which looks ahead to the next 25 years and represents the Secretary-General’s vision on the future of global cooperation and multilateralism. 

01 September 2021
The latest updates in the development of SEEA accounts in Africa and Asia: High-level launch of the project in Malaysia, land accounting in the Phillipines and a technical workshop with ARIES in Senegal.
28 April 2021

IBGE – the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics released on 28 April another experimental ecosystem accounting study.

26 March 2021

The high-level webinar on the SEEA EA for countries in Latin America took place on Thursday, 4 February 2021. The Webinar was co-organized by the UN-ECLAC Statistics Division and the UN Statistics Division (UNSD) and was attended by over 117 participants, including 5 heads of NSOs, from 16 countries in Latin America. 

26 March 2021

Two side events were recently organized by the SEEA community during the 52nd session of the United Nations Statistical Commission: (1) From experimental ocean accounts to SEEA-Ocean; and (2) High Level Discussion on Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism.  

28 January 2021

Held over three days, the NCAVES India Forum 2021 was the culmination of the impressive work undertaken in India following the SEEA Ecosystem Accounting as part of the three-year E.U.-funded NCAVES project.

19 December 2020

The year 2020 has been unlike any other. Yet, as countries look towards 2021 and begin their recoveries from the pandemic, there is growing recognition that new measures are needed to move beyond GDP, and towards a system that considers all of humanity’s assets—natural, human, social and institutional.

02 December 2020

Pretoria, South Africa, 2 December 2020 - Today South Africa launches its first ecosystem accounts at national level, under the publication, Land and Terrestrial Ecosystem Accounts, 1990 to 2014.

05 November 2020

IBGE recently released ecosystem accounts for threatened species in Brazil, as part of the EU-funded Natural Capital Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services project.

28 October 2020

The global consultation on the complete draft of the System Environmental-Economic Accounting—Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) has been launched and is ongoing until the end of November 2020. 

23 October 2020

Since the last update on the SEEA EEA revision process in August 2020 all of the chapters of the revised SEEA EA have been drafted and the complete draft has been submitted for the second global consultation.

30 September 2020

NSO India published its third annual report on environmental-economic accounts, on 30th September, 2020 formally titled “EnviStats India 2020 Vol. II - Environment Accounts”.

24 September 2020

Brazil recently released ecosystem extent accounts for 2000-2018, which show that Brazilian terrestrial biomes lost about 500 thousand km2 of their natural areas.

04 August 2020

The global material footprint is growing rapidly, outpacing population and economic growth.  Material footprint entails the volume of biomass, metals, non-metallic minerals and fossil fuels that we extract. Materials fuel our economies and underpin human development and well-being. The global extraction of these materials has more than tripled since 1970 and continues to grow at an accelerated rate.

03 August 2020

For the third consecutive year, as part of the NCAVES project, Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa presented the progress made in piloting ecosystem accounts, during the first two sessions of the 2020 Virtual Forum of Experts in SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting.  

23 July 2020

A new pilot study of ecosystem accounting in South Africa maps, measures and values a suite of ecosystem services for the province of KwaZulu-Natal.

06 April 2020

The first global consultation on individual chapters of the revised SEEA EEA was launched.

06 April 2020

Australia, an international leader in the development of ecosystem accounting, has strong domestic support  for the SEEA EEA Revision process.  Australian scientists and other members of its academic community participate actively  in the technical working groups that have been developed to inform the revised standards. 

23 March 2020

Earlier this month, we went live with our new knowledge base. Designed to be an easy-to-use document and media repository, we hope this new knowledge base will become a “go-to” library when you are looking for any resources to do with the SEEA and natural capital accounting.

12 March 2020

The last few weeks saw much recognition of the SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EEA) and its revision process in leading academic journals, and its importance in light of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, which will be agreed at the COP-15 in October in Kunming, China.

13 December 2019

On December 4th, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) released the results of the SEEA-Mexico (economic and ecological accounts of Mexico), including accounting tables in physical and monetary terms on the impact of economic activities on the environment (air, water and soil).

09 December 2019

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. 

06 December 2019

Earth Observations in Support of Environmental-Economic Accounting: understanding the value of ecosystems to people”, a side-event of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Week 2019 took place on November 4 in Canberra. The event provided an opportunity for exploring the contribution of the SEEA to sustainable development.