Definition: System of integrated environmental economic accoun...

Category: Environment

The system of integrated environmental economic accounts (SEEA), developed collectively by the United Nations, the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Bank, is a satellite system of the SNA (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.

The SEEA synthesises and integrates as far as possible the different categories of environmental economic accounts. In general, all these categories broaden the existing SNA concepts of cost, capital formation and stock of capital by supplementing them with additional data in physical terms in order to encompass environmental cost and the use of natural assets in production, or by amending them through the incorporation of these effects in monetary terms. Within this general orientation, the several existing categories differ considerably in terms of methodology and the environmental concerns addressed. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2011:192:0001:0016:EN:PDF