International Seminar on Natural Capital Accounting

China is one of the project countries for the “Natural Capital Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services” (NCAVES) jointly implemented by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) in collaboration of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) with funding by the European Union.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of China is leading the project nationally. Building on the SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EEA), the project will strengthen and support the national compilation of natural resource balance sheet on land, forest and water and pilot ecosystem accounting following the SEEA EEA approach in both physical and monetary terms in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Guizhou Province. The project will also conduct a study of ecosystem compensation standards in Xijiang basin in Guangxi based on scenario, with an objective to fix up the ecosystem compensation standards in Xijiang basin for the reference of regional ecosystem compensation policy making.

This event is organized as part of the NCAVES project funded by the European Union and as part of the project on strengthening statistical capacity development in China and other partner countries funded by the Chinese Government. The objectives of the events are to:

• Explore the emerging opportunities for Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) to support national priorities in China, including the deliberations at CBD CoP 2020
• Present early highlights from China’s work on natural capital accounting
• Facilitate sharing of experiences and lesson learnt from NCAVES project countries the mainstreaming and implementation of the NCA
• Deepen participants understanding of the accounting principles and methodology in ecosystem accounts based on the SEEA EEA, with a focus on ecosystem valuation and scenario modelling analysis