Cooperation between the United States, Australia and Canada arose out of a realisation that like-minded countries could work together to better recognise the contribution of nature and natural resources to our economic prosperity. On 15 December 2022, the United States and Australian governments announced a commitment to cooperate on Natural Capital Accounting (NCA), Environmental-Economic Accounting (EEA), and Related Statistics, outlining their intention to convene a Technical Working Group (TWG). Canada joined the U.S.-AUS TWG partnership in a technical capacity on the 9th of December 2023.
The purpose of the TWG is to facilitate shared learnings, leverage expertise, solve common challenges, and work towards a common approach to implementing natural capital accounts and environmental-economic statistics, guided by the UN System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (UN-SEEA) framework.
The Office of Management and Budget (Office of the Chief Statistician of the United States) hosted the second series, which focused on Water Accounts, spanning six sessions discussing the following topics:
- Water accounts overview
- Water accounts: supply and use
- Water accounts: quality and emissions
- Water accounts: stocks and assets
- Water accounts: ecosystem accounting
- Emerging issues in Water accounting
These sessions were attended by Federal Government experts across the U.S., Australia and Canada working on Natural Capital Accounting/Environmental Economic Accounting and related statistics.
Presentations covered the status of water accounts in each country. Common approaches and methods for producing water accounts were discussed including data sources such as water use surveys, water monitoring, use of remotely-sensed earth observation data and modelling. Along with the common approaches, common challenges were also discussed. These included:
- data availability and data gaps issues, including issues of national comparability and short-term records;
- geographic and temporal scales and national versus local issues;
- ability to produce physical and monetary accounts at small-area level;
- issues collecting water use information from water users, leading to challenges in publishing accurate industry-level disaggregations;
- accurate classification and mapping of agricultural land, reservoirs, and other resources;
- measuring groundwater stocks and estimating hydroelectric water use; and
- challenges in water valuation.
Outcomes
This second series of the TWG provided a platform for experts in Water Accounting in the United States, Australia and Canada the opportunity to:
- share information and dialogue (guided by the UN-SEEA framework),
- solve common challenges and leverage expertise on Water accounting, in aiming to achieve comparability of approaches, as appropriate; and
- form relationships to continue the conversation on technical developments in this space.
This series facilitated an opportunity for a common approach to NCA, EEA and environmental-economic statistics and advanced opportunities for global leadership and agenda setting on NCA and nature-based solutions.
Next TWG Series
The next Technical Working Group Series will begin in early 2025 and will cover an array of different topics, such as natural resource asset accounting, accounting for hazards and issues related to the SEEA Central Framework revision.