The Handbook of National Accounting: Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting, commonly referred to as SEEA-2003 provides a common framework for economic and environmental information, permitting a consistent analysis of the contribution of the environment to the economy and of the impact of the economy on the environment. It is intended to meet the needs of policy makers by providing indicators and descriptive statistics to monitor the interaction between the economy and the environment as well as serving as a tool for strategic planning and policy analysis to identify more sustainable development paths. Because of the growing interest and experience of countries, the international community agreed to elevate the SEEA-2003 from a manual of best practices to an international statistical standard on par with the Accounts.

The handbook covers a) asset accounts for natural resources that record stocks and changes in stocks during the year of natural resources such as fish or minerals; b) physical and hybrid flow accounts that provide a systematic description of flows from the environment to the economy (such as raw materials), flows within the economy (such as products), and flows from the economy to the environment (such as waste and emissions); c) accounts that separately identify all transactions included implicitly in the economic accounts that are related to the environment such as taxes and subsidies but also expenditures on protection, remediation or management of the environment.