Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting 2003 (SEEA 2003)

The Handbook of National Accounting: Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting 2003 (PDF file, 7.46 mb) referred to as SEEA 2003, is a satellite system of the System of National Accounts. It brings together economic and environmental information in a common framework to measure the contribution of the environment to the economy and the impact of the economy on the environment. It provides policy-makers with indicators and descriptive statistics to monitor these interactions as well as a database for strategic planning and policy analysis to identify more sustainable paths of development.

• Flow accounts for pollution, energy and materials (Chapters 3 and 4). These accounts provide information at the industry level about the use of energy and materials as inputs to production and the generation of pollutants and solid waste.



• Environmental protection and resource management expenditure accounts (Chapters 5 and 6). These accounts identify expenditures incurred by industry, government and households to protect the environment or to manage natural resources. They take those elements of the existing SNA which are relevant to the good management of the environment and show how the environment-related transactions can be made more explicit.



• Natural resource asset accounts (Chapters 7 and 8). These accounts record stocks and changes in stocks of natural resources such as land, fish, forest, water and minerals.



• Valuation of non-market flow and environmentally adjusted aggregates (Chapters 9 and 10). This component presents non-market valuation techniques and their applicability in answering specific policy questions. It discusses the calculation of several macroeconomic aggregates adjusted for depletion and degradation costs and their advantages and disadvantages. It also considers adjustments concerning the so-called defensive expenditures.

The revision was undertaken under the joint responsibility of the United Nations, Eurostat, IMF, OECD and the World Bank. Much of the work was done by the London Group on Environmental Accounting.

The final draft chapters of the SEEA 2003 are presented here for information, prior to final editing and reproduction. An Index will be posted at a later date. The Draft Glossary is already available for comments. In due course, the handbook will also be issued in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish.