UNEP develops a compiler to assist countries build Economy-Wide Material Flow Accounts

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. 

The EW-MFA Compiler includes 29 excel sheets grouped into three sets, providing: 

  • Introduction, brief description of tables and definitions (green set);  

  • The basic structure required for these accounts, including table A on Domestic Extraction, table B on Imports of Materials, table C on Exports of Materials, table D on Material Outflows, table E on Balancing Items, and Table F on Headline indicators (blue set); and  

  • A number of simple tools to convert available statistics into the required MFA categories, and to calculate some categories of materials, where these categories are not the result of a simple summation (orange set).  

The EW-MFA Compiler should be used in conjunction with reading the Global Manual on Economy-Wide Material Flow Accounting

The EW-MFA Compiler and other available tools to support countries in their work with MFA have already been presented at several events related to SEEA, including the Global Webinar on Geospatial and Other Data Sources for Environment Statistics: Assessing the Impact of the Economy on the Environment, conducted by UNEP and UNODC on 21-23 March 2023, and will continue to be used for capacity building activities on MFA in the future. 

If you have any questions or requests related to the EW-MFA Compiler, please contact the SDG and Environment Statistics Unit of UNEP (unep-ewad-sdgs@un.org) and copy Ekaterina Poleshchuk (ekaterina.poleshchuk@un.org) and Dany Ghafari (dany.ghafari@un.org).