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The System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) is a framework integrating information from different sources with the aim of enabling better decision making by governments, business and others. Accounting allows a wide variety of data to be synthesised so that regular information and indicators are produced and can feed into decision-making processes. The accounting recognises that while there may be discrepancies between different data sources as well as data gaps, government and business must continually make decisions. Over time both the accounts and underlying data improves across the six dimensions of data quality – relevance, accuracy, timeliness, accessibility, interpretability and coherence. In individual data sources the focus is mostly on accuracy (i.e. closeness of estimate to the real number) but accounting addresses all of the six dimensions and has particular strengths in timeliness, accessibility, interpretability and coherence providing data when it is needed in a consistent format. Using examples from high and low-income countries we describe how SEEA can improve information systems and data quality for decision making and distil lessons for the development of the European Shared Environmental Information System.

Reversing the ongoing degradation of the planet's ecosystems requires timely and detailed monitoring of ecosystem change and uses. Yet, the System of National Accounts (SNA), first developed in response to the economic crisis of the 1930s and used by statistical offices worldwide to record economic activity (for example, production, consumption, and asset accumulation), does not make explicit either inputs from the environment to the economy or the cost of environmental degradation (1, 2). Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (EEA), part of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA), has been developed to monitor and report on ecosystem change and use, using the same accounting approach, concepts, and classifications as the SNA (3). The EEA is part of the statistical community's response to move SNA measurement “beyond gross domestic product (GDP).” With the first generation of ecosystem accounts now published in 24 countries, and with a push to finalize a United Nations (UN) statistical standard for ecosystem accounting by 2021, we highlight key advances, challenges, and opportunities.

In 2012, the Netherlands started the testing and production of high resolution, national scale ecosystem accounts following the methodology of the System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EEA), in short ‘ecosystem accounting’. The SEEA is endorsed by the United Nations Statistical Commission as a comprehensive system for analysing and recording physical and monetary information on ecosystems and human dependencies on ecosystems. Many other countries have been developing natural capital accounts following the SEEA EEA, but the Netherlands work was novel in the sense that a comprehensive set of accounts has been developed for the whole country, including high resolution maps and accounting tables of ecosystem type, condition, services, assets, carbon and biodiversity. The work involved over 10 man-years of work, and was carried out in a collaboration by the Netherlands Statistical Office (CBS) and Wageningen University. This paper presents the methodologies followed and results obtained, and reflects on the policy applications of the accounts. Some further testing and development of the SEEA EEA is needed and also the Netherlands accounts are not yet complete. Nevertheless, the lessons learned in the Netherlands are relevant for other accounting efforts world-wide.

In this paper we construct bilateral emission trade balances (ETB) for The Netherlands with 17 regions and compare results for 1996 and 2007 for three different greenhouse gasses. We establish a cross-sectional analysis of bilateral ETBs into a volume of trade, composition and technology effect. In order to analyze the driving forces of changes over time we perform a structural decomposition analysis of embodied import and export emissions. The main findings are that the embodied import emissions have increased by 37% whereas export emissions increased by only 3%, which is primarily driven by CO2. The 2007 bilateral balances are positive with OECD countries but negative with economies such as Russia, Africa and China. The analyses demonstrate that the worsening of the ETB is to a large extent caused by the changing composition of trade: the Dutch economy increasingly exports clean products and imports dirty products.

In March 2021, the UN Statistical Commission adopted the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting Ecosystem Accounting. The SEEA EA provides detailed guidance measuring the extent and condition of ecosystems, and how to quantify ecosystem services. This paper presents the SEEA EA in terms of the various types of ecosystem accounts, its origins, purposes and applications. A first handbook was published in 2013 followed by a period of testing. A revision process was launched in 2018 involving a wide range of experts in ecology, environmental economics and statistics. They proposed new or updated classifications for ecosystems and ecosystem condition, a reference list of ecosystem services and improved the internal consistency of the different ecosystem accounts. These proposals were reviewed in two global consultation rounds yielding strong support for a standard approach to ecosystem accounting. Finally, the conceptual framework and the physical accounts (extent, condition and services) are adopted as an international statistical standard. The guidance on monetary accounts (ecosystem services, ecosystem assets, sequence of accounts) is considered as internationally recognised principles and recommendations. Countries are encouraged to develop ecosystem accounts for use in policy and decision-making processes in both public and private sector and contribute to its further methodological development.