SEEA-Compliant Environmental Economic Accounting Using Geospatial Technologies

Overview

Environmental-Economic Accounts are integrated statistics that highlight the relationship between the environment and the economy. These accounts offer information on the extraction of natural resources, their use within the economy, natural resource stock levels, the changes in those stocks during a specific period and economic activity related to the environment. Put simply, they highlight the impact of the economy on the environment and the contribution of the environment to the economy.

The System Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) is the accepted international standard for environmental-economic accounting, providing a framework for organizing and presenting comparable statistics in an internationally agreed set of concepts, definitions, classifications, accounting rules and tables. In addition, the SEEA Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA) constitutes an integrated and comprehensive statistical framework for organizing data about habitats and landscapes, measuring the ecosystem services, tracking changes in ecosystem assets, and linking them to economic and human activity.

Vision: To adopt a common framework for international acceptability and develop SEEA-compatible Environment Accounts for cross-departmental usage and adoption.

Objectives

y To assist in the development of environmental accounts for usage by different ministry verticals for policy purposes, based on the subjects covered. y To promote standardization and international interoperability of environment accounts among all stakeholders working with various aspects of the economy and environment. y To release the accounts for public viewing and reference.

Stakeholders Involved

Concerned Ministries/Departments of Government of India, academic communities, research organizations, and civil societies.

Solution and Implementation

A high-level Expert Group under the Chairmanship of Prof. Partha Dasgupta was constituted by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) in 2011. Its mandate was to develop a framework for the Green National Accounts of India and to prepare a roadmap for implementing the framework.

As per the recommendations of the Expert Group, the Ministry began compiling environment accounts in 2018 as per the SEEA framework, supported by another Expert Group comprising members from Ministries, academia, and research organisations. Every year the Ministry bring out accounts in new areas besides updating already developed accounts. The Ministry has already identified the priority areas in which accounts need to be developed for the next five years (2022-2026) and is working to achieve the goal.

To initiate an accounting of any ecosystem, the first step is to do an intensive literature review of methodologies and other conceptual aspects. The data availability for compiling such accounts is then assessed. The methodologies and data issues are thoroughly discussed in the expert group meeting before the accounts are released in the public domain.

Use of Geospatial Technologies

The annual publication of MoSPI, “EnviStats India Vol. II: Environment Accounts” releases the prepared environmental accounts aligned with the SEEA framework, giving a systematic glimpse of the State of the Environment in India regarding various assets and ecosystems. Many of the accounts compiled by the National Statistical Office (NSO), MoSPI, use Geospatial data as input. Geospatial technologies are used for both compilation and visualisation of these accounts.

For instance, the data used for compiling extent accounts and asset accounts for land and forest have been obtained using spatial datasets. The Land Use and land Cover datasets by NRSC are fundamental for developing land accounts, similarly, the accounts for wasteland and degraded land and wetlands have also been derived using geospatial datasets.

One such example of using geospatial datasets for compiling environment accounts is ‘Soil Regulation Services provided by Croplands’ which was compiled and published in 2020. An important ecosystem service produced by croplands is the ‘soil erosion prevention service’, thereby, mitigating several negative impacts of soil erosion. In assessing the soil erosion prevention services, the first step is to evaluate the erosion that would occur when vegetation is absent and therefore no ecosystem service is provided.

The methodology used by NSO to estimate soil erosion is the implementation of the RUSLE equation in a GIS environment for the estimation of different factors and annual soil loss for the croplands in India. To run RUSLE in GIS software (e.g., ArcGIS, QGIS) the raster layers of land structure, land cover, rainfall and soil data are utilized. NRSC land cover datasets, as well as global and local datasets, have been used to produce soil loss estimates for croplands