Development of Ecosystem Accounts using ARIES for SEEA: Training for Country Practitioners
In order to support the uptake of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) in Africa, a training programme for the application of ARIES for SEEA was held in Kigali, Rwanda, from 18-22 July 2022, for selected member countries of of the Gaborone Declaration for Sustainability in Africa (GDSA).
Country practitioners from Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda took part in this workshop organized with the objective to build capacity on the conceptual basis for ecosystem accounting, data and modelling requirements, and the use of ARIES for SEEA to develop accounts.
The ARIES for SEEA Explorer, an application developed by researchers at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) in Spain, can generate ecosystem accounts for any user-specified terrestrial area in the world (such as a country, administrative region, watershed, etc.), by using freely available global remote-sensing derived data and models, that can be further improved by using national data sources and models.
ARIES for SEEA is part of the interoperability strategy that presents a concrete path toward data and model interoperability (able to work together with a minimal effort) to support the compilation of the SEEA ecosystem accounts.
The meeting documents including presentations are available here: Development of Ecosystem Accounts using ARIES for SEEA: Training for Country Practitioners - The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (teebweb.org)
This workshop was co-organized by UN Environment, the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), UN Development Programme (UNDP), the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), the GDSA Secretariat and the Regional Hub of the UN Global Platform in Rwanda.
SEEA EA e-learning resources:
Free e-learning course on SEEA Ecosystem Accounting can be found here