The UN Environment Programme-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) has developed technical guidance on experimental biodiversity accounting to address the gap in accounting knowledge, given that accounting for the variable components of biodiversity is complex and less advanced than for water or carbon accounting.
30 September 2015: The UN Environment Programme-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) has developed technical guidance on experimental biodiversity accounting to address the gap in accounting knowledge, given that accounting for the variable components of biodiversity is complex and less advanced than for water or carbon accounting.
The technical guidance is an output of a project to advance the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EEA), which provides a framework to measure and link ecosystem service flows supported by biodiversity and other ecosystem characteristics, such as soil type and altitude, with economic and other livelihood activities, including growing food or gathering water for consumption.
The technical guidance document on experimental biodiversity accounting is aimed at practitioners who want to collect and organize data regarding the status and trends of ecosystems and species diversity, and incorporate this into the SEEA-EEA national accounting framework. Information on biodiversity is organized into a spatial format that is consistent with other national statistical frameworks in order to allow for comparing and integrating data on biodiversity and ecosystem services with other economic and social data, such as data on sector performance or from census surveys. In this regard, practitioners will be able to understand the relationship between biodiversity, economic development and planning activities.
The technical guidance document also uses case studies from across the globe to give countries an idea of how they can implement biodiversity accounting. The experimental Biodiversity Accounts are not necessarily intended to be prescriptive; rather they require testing, refining and validation in different contexts in order to determine their suitability for integration into national accounting systems and decision making.
The Biodiversity Account is one of a number of accounts in the SEEA-EEA framework. UNEP-WCMC developed the guidance in collaboration with the UN Statistics Division, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity Office of UNEP and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). [UNEP News Story] [Technical Guidance Document on Experimental Biodiversity Accounting as a component of the SEEA-EEA]