Environmental Accounting
Initiative of the United Nations

SEEA ... UN System of Environmental Economic Accounting

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

7. Given its multidisciplinary scope, the SEEA Central Framework was designed to be coherent with and complementary to other international standards, recommendations and classifications such as

• the System of National Accounts 2008,

• the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position,

• the International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC),

• the Central Product Classification (CPC) and

• the Framework for the Development of Environment Statistics.

• SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting and

• SEEA Applications and Extensions.

While SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting is not a statistical standard, it provides a consistent and coherent synthesis of current knowledge regarding an accounting approach to the measurement of ecosystems within a model that complements the SEEA Central Framework.

The SEEA Applications and Extensions presents various monitoring and analytical approaches which could be adopted using SEEA data sets and describes ways in which the SEEA can be used to inform policy analysis. It, too, is not a statistical standard.