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SEEA Intervention from the Intemerate Working Group on Data, Statistics and Valuation


DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS STATISTICS DIVISION UNITED NATIONS		     

System of Environmental-Economic Accounting—Ecosystem Accounting

UN SEEA– EEA REVISION

Global Consultation on the complete document:

General comments

Question 1: Do you have comments on the overall draft of the SEEA Ecosystem Accounting?

SEEA intervention from the Intermerate working group on data, statistics and valutation

Ecological accounting is the foundation that we, as an interdependent global society, require to determine economic value and to safeguard that which cannot be given price. The SEEA and our preferred approach to ecological accounting both spring from the recognition of this fact.

This is because these values are unreliable indicators of the overall impact of production on our lives and our planet, being based on the exchange prices of labour, land and other factors or resources which are in turn skewed by exchange rates, historical conventions and the relative scarcity of the item in the market in which it is purchased and consumed.

The logic of the SEEA is, as often repeated in the draft document, the provision of reliable data and information to facilitate decision-making.

Indeed, the document does provide clear definition on ecosystems, their extent, condition and interaction with the economic.

We applaud the effort to develop a platform that would allow adoption of environmental-economic accounting by national statistical offices and countries across the globe.  

Historical Background

However, considering how the SEEA has progressed since the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1983;

Proceeding to the formation of the Integrated Environmental Economic Accounting workbook in 1992 where it was affirmed that “the economy was a part of nature and that integrated environmental and economic accounting should not consist in an economic accounting of the environment; rather, the economy should be treated as part of an environmental accounting system;”

Recognizing that the revision of the SNA in 2008 rejected environmental degradation and resource depletion because it was “too experimental”, while moving Military Systems from an inventoried account to a fixed asset, which embraced a value of National Security over our global ecological security;

Recalling that the 2012 Central Framework where environmental accounting structures are being harmonized for private investment regimes;

And concerned that the current 2020 Ecosystem account where our ecological asset valuations are set to be standardized to investment markets;

As a working group we feel the need to intervene with a People’s equation for an ecological-economic account  

Alternative: Intemerate Accounting

We present our alternative: the Intemerate Accounting Equation.

We submit that biodiversity underlies both current and future factors of production. Climate change and environmental degradation constitute a massive factor in reducing wealth creation, and pose imminent danger to effective democratic and economic systems.

We submit that environmental assets and ecological services are defining features of our choices with regards to civilization and human settlement. Individual administrative areas, especially cities are already historically defined by environmental conditions, most notably the availability of water and arable land. It is fundamental for the maintenance of human civilization that reference conditions be established and restored in a manner that combines the advantages of technology, democracy and traditional stewardship. We submit that ecological accounting will only be effective if it increases communities’ sense of engagement and efficacy in recording, safeguarding, and increasing ecological value.

We respectfully reject this initiative, and ask you to support a People’s Revision of ecological-economic accounts, and submit our equation to be considered for the improvement and democratization of the current national accounting system.

Comments by sets of chapters

Question 2. Do you have comments on Chapters 1-2 of the draft SEEA Ecosystem Accounting?

1.4.3 Connection to the System of National Accounts   In earlier iterations of the SEEA (2003), the aspiration for reversing climate change was to fold GDP into the SEEA. At face value, that would suggest that degradation would be accounted for as a deficit rather than to enhance the value of depletion. We feel that in principle, it is disingenuous to expand the value of ecosystem assets in order to compensate for degradation and loss.   This inversion of now folding the SEEA into the consumption and production values of GDP will do very little to reverse climate change and instead seeks to use ecological accounts to enhance  GDP by expanding the value of ecosystem assets, which benefits further privatization of our public assets like water.

Our intemerate equation does not put a value on our ecological biodiversity, anymore than we would put a value on immaculate conception. If we believe that existentially, our ecological biodiversity is sacrosanct, one would not undervalue degradation by overvaluing depletion. In our accounting matrix, we acknowledge GDP and the function of investment markets and service industries. What we have done was to  put the value on what we call the intemerate offsets, thereby treating restoration as a service, and allowing states to transition away from GDP at their own rate, while measurable indicators value restoring our ecological biodiversity towards the intemerate baseline.

While GDP may very well reflect the US and privilege NIPA over other accounting systems, by definition, our national accounts are supposed to mirror a country’s economy. For developing countries, GDP has never adequately reflected the productive interactions between peoples and their environment. Hence, our intemerate accounts, establishes an accounting sidetable for developing countries who will benefit from a restoration economy.  It will not take anything away from already existing industries and partners, but our accounting sidetable will adjust GDP towards our intemerate assets, and place well being as a modulator to the country’s GDP.    

Question 3. Do you have comments on Chapters 3-5 of the draft SEEA Ecosystem Accounting?

Addressing 5.8x, While we understand the need to mainframe and standardize aggregated values, particularly for investors, the weighting of values does not properly account for the relationship that people have with their land and resources. Our ecological data must remain the property of the state/community. It will be far too easy to perpetuate economic disparties through capitalizing data if we standardize the measurements of standards and fllows. It will be far too easy to undervalue that which is sacrosanct, and overvalue that which primarily values degrading and depleting industries.

Our intemerate model values the offsets and monetizes the incremental restorative offsets rather than commodify ecological assets, and weighs values according to people and their relationship to their resources. What is standardized are the offsets, and those can be valued to the marketplace.

Question 4. Do you have comments on Chapters 6-7 of the draft SEEA Ecosystem Accounting?

The benefit of the SEEA has been an in depth analysis and description of linking biodiversity and ecosystem services. I would only add that we all have the opportunity to measure, to count, to examine, to protect, to nurture, to analyze, to collect, to describe, to compile, to publish, to monitor and manage our environments.  This is a service, and it is  how we interact with the environment. Global peoples need to play a greater role in ecosystem services. It is the Peoples interactions that  should be accounted for in our national economies.  

Question 5. Do you have comments on Chapters 8-11 of the draft SEEA Ecosystem Accounting?

Understanding that there are different strategies for monetizing ecosystem services, the SEEA has an opportunity to promote a system where traditional and customary peoples who have stewarded their lands and environments for generations will  benefit as we move towards a restoration economy. It is also important for people to “own” and manage their own ecological data. The environmental data will be a tremendous revenue source for people, especially as markets for environmental data become more defined.

The intemerate accounting framework includes a financial scheme that includes equalization, promoting just, fair and equitable  accounts.

Question 6. Do you have comments on Chapters 12-14 of the draft SEEA Ecosystem Accounting?

In 12.30 of this draft, it states that it was considered that there was no market of institutional mechanism by which the restoration costs are confronted with the benefits associated with the change in environmental quality.

I beg to differ, and would cite that the justification of moving weapons systems to being a fixed asset was extremely imaginative, even if it does not make sense in the context of valuing peace. Valuing weapons systems according to the value of national security is a slight of hand that is also, probably very difficult to justify when weighted against the value of our environment, our ecological biodiversity and our general welfare.

The best accounting minds in the UNSD might easily dismiss our intemerate equation because it does not fit into conventional aggregates or standards, but then, those same accounting minds should also put to task the same energy to remove how weapons systems are accounted for.   The best accounting minds should also consider how intemerate accounting– how a people’s accounting framework– can reverse the impacts of climate change and move the global economy forward in a way tht embraces the spirit of the 1983 World Commission on Environment and Development, and find ways to enhance the global economy rather than to manage it under the same economic system of management that led to the ecological miasma we are currently in.   Thank you for your time and the opportunity to submit this intervention.
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Intemerate Accounts

WCC Presentation,
January 4, 2021

Hello everyone, my name is Arnie Saiki and I’m part of an independent working group on data, statistics, and valuation. working on an ecological-economic accounting system that we call intemerate accounting.  Intemerate means pure, inviolate, and sacrosanct, and it is predicated on the notion that our ecological biodiversity is existential and as such cannot be valued as a commodity. What can be valued however are the offsets and our interaction with each other and our environment, and that is the foundational principle behind our intemerate accounting scheme.

We are at a time when we are all seeking solutions to a planet in crisis. As evident, the world is clearly in crisis and while most of us have put the coronavirus pandemic at the forefront of dealing with the social and economic aftermath, the crises of climate change looms larger in the background. Setting the clock back a year to before the pandemic, it’s important to remember that the neoliberal economic system was already in turmoil. National public debt had already surpassed the 90% debt-to-GDP threshold of the advanced economies and developing countries had already begun to shift their attention towards China and the Belt and Road Initiative because it provided a much better alternative than the western counterparts.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated any notion of economic recovery, and while COVID-19 is blamed for our economic downturn, it’s important to remember that the economic downturn happened in 2008 with Wall Street financial collapse and how the larger economies remained solvent through debt vehicles like Quantitative Easing of which trillions of dollars were poured into the advanced economies.

Because of time, I’ll leave the economic reading there, and if there are disputes we can come back to that, I just want to make clear that we understand that COVID-19 was not a catalyst for our economic downturn, but rather a symptom.

So having said that, as we look for solutions to fix our economic and ecological crises, we have to understand that the interactions between our ecology and economy are absolutely and fundamentally intertwined.  When there is a disconnect between the ecology and economy, the assumption should be that there is something that is not working. In the case of our planet, our ecology works. Millions of years of evolution have created an ecosystem of mutual interactions, and for thousands of those years, humans have developed a notion of the economy: of trade, infrastructure, and supply chains that interacted with the world. The ecology is what works.  That is the fundamental by which we should be measuring our economies, our laws, our trade, infrastructure, and supply chains. Not the other way around.

It is simple enough to trace the evolution of law and economic principles and we can readily pinpoint the moments when industries promoted these laws above the laws of nature. So when we look for solutions to fix our existential crises, why do we turn to economic models that have created these crises, to begin with?

But of course, the crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and the threats to our ecological sustainability is much greater than either the coronavirus or collapsing economic failures, as these are long-term, fundamental, and existential and cannot be fixed with a vaccine.

What provides some hope, however, is our young people who can fight for change. Young people travel to the far reaches of their imagination every day and find solutions to problems.  It doesn’t necessarily matter whether they believe in magic, spells, incantations, religions, or abstracted political or economic notions of democracy, justice, capitalism, communism, or karma. These are all distractions. What is needed is good global governance, a strong regulatory regime, and an economic interaction that works for people’s health, and the environment, our ecological biodiversity as a whole.

There will not be an economic miracle as long as neoliberal principles of privatization continue to militarize people’s access to their environments and basic livelihood. It is absolutely evident that how we begin to heal this existential crisis is by restoring our ecological biodiversity while promoting people’s interactions with their environments.

How we do this is to implement a new ecological accounting paradigm.  There are many methodologies and routes that can be utilized and we should encourage indigenous and local methodologies to be explored. But we need to be clear that this does not include the privatizing of environments by conservation cabals that end up privatizing technologies in surveillance, monitoring, protecting, etc, nor should we be valuing resources like water as commodities that can be traded in futures trades on wall street.

First and foremost, we should promote a transitional national accounting scheme that includes well-being while valuing the restoration of our ecological biodiversity.

As part of the Reweaving our Ecological Mat program, our objectives were to reimagine the Pacific to restore our ecological biodiversity while supporting the developmental needs of our peoples and created an equation that could be used as a national accounting side table.

As we pursued this we realized that this accounting side table could be used to support trade, infrastructure, and supply chains for the benefit, and within the logic of our ecological biodiversity across developing countries, particularly in the ACP.

Now in the time of the coronavirus, it has become apparent that we may have created a transitional equation that allows all economies to shift towards greater equalization.

The intemerate equation is tangible, it is like a seed that we can plant and begin to reframe the global economy to a place where economy and ecology can once again be harmonized.

And while it is something tangible to provide hope, I don’t want to suggest that this is the only solution. This will require work and mutual cooperation, and there are some who will violently obstruct any attempt to promote just and equitable governance, even at the risk of planetary existence. 

and how I come to use this somewhat obscure word is that it really defines the idea that our ecological biodiversity is existential and as such cannot simply be valued as a commodity, but rather valued as part of a pure and sacrosanct system. The other thing is that the root, temer means fear or dread, which is an apt description of how I think we feel about the world if our economic system does not change.

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President Konrote of Fiji considers Ecological Accounts

Officiating the Voices in the Deep (VOID) art exhibition, it’s really good to hear the President of The Republic of Fiji, His Excellency Major-General (Ret’d) Jioji Konusi Konrote, speak so favorably about the Reweaving the Ecological Mat movement.

With his attention fixed on these issues around our ecological biodiversity and the process for national accounting, the hope that he references might turn to practice and action.

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Towards our Ecological Economic Star Line

Our Pacific Voyagers carry a tremendous burden.  They carry the weight of our history and who we are as Pacific Islanders.  They are risk takers who defy western conventions to prove that our traditional knowledge has a place in the world. They are revolutionaries who defy decades of the colonial system that has sought only to diminish our customary knowledge and technologies.  As heroes of the Pacific, they have also become metaphors for struggle, for faith, for diligence and resilience.

As Pacific Islanders, we hold our traditional navigators high because they represent the value of who we most identify with in the world.  Culturally, we move through the world with the regality of ambassadors. When we speak, our voices are heard and our music and dance brings joy.

Yet when it comes to valuing our inherent Pacific assets, why do we suddenly become weak, dependent, our hands wide, arms stretched across the ocean as if we have lost our way home. How do we not know our own value?

Our ecological assets are immense, yet for some reason, we do not believe in the value of our ecological assets. As part of the global economy, we have the ability to interact with the world as equals– with mutual cooperation and exchange.

There is a constellation that our Pacific Navigators have traditionally followed. In Hawaiian it is called Hanaiakamalama (“cared for by the moon” otherwise called the Southern Cross) and its alignment with the navigational starline to Ka Iwikuamo’o was a backbone for our Pacific Voyagers to traverse our Liquid Continent.

Our ecological way forward is in view, and just as our Pacific Voyagers can stand on the shore and look towards the heavens to know when it is time to voyage, it is time for our leaders to move us forward now, rather than hold us back by signing legally binding investment and trade agreements that will further tether us to the post-colonial ambitions of our so-called big brother countries.

The navigational star line is in front of us. Our regional economic well-being is in front of us. There is a rational accounting framework that reflects who we are and measures our engagement in the global economy.

When one considers the wake-up call that is Covid-19; or that the western economy is in shambles; or that Australia’s fear of losing its control over the Pacific to China who is offering the region access and infrastructure; or that there are new data technologies in communication, finance and artificial intelligence that would benefit our regional security; or that there may be an economic incentive to finally liberate us from our struggles against extractive industries, depletion and degradation… it is as if the heavens finally heard the clarion call of Epeli Hauofa and lifted the obstructions and barriers that have kept us tethered to the yoke of colonialism.

And so, if we are so free then why are we still standing on the shore with our hands and arms outstretched? Maybe we have lost our understanding of value, the way that we almost lost our ability to read our navigational star lines. What motivates our liberation in the Pacific must be more than cultural, it also has to be economic, for if it is not, we will not be able to adequately address climate change on our terms, nor will we be able to remain in our homes. But what is the future that we want? Is it to enhance our well being and steward our environment with our own resilient technologies? 

This requires investment and capital that neither Australia nor the US will provide, unless they can own and privatize it.  With a new ecological accounting framework, we can increase our national accounts and provide our own services to meet the needs of our region.

Who is really saying that the Pacific cannot assert an economic-ecological scheme independent of the post-colonial privatization agenda?

For those who say “no,” then they are no different from the early colonizers who set fire to our voyaging canoes, ensuring that they restrict our movements. Whose vision do we really hold when we dream, what language do we speak?  It is evident that the only ones who would seek to inhibit our attempts to advance our ecological-economic ambitions are the very same ones who want to continue exploiting our resources.

A Pacific economy should not simply be a dream or something one hopes for.

But what is the cost of this Just, Fair and Equitable society? Is there a value of the dream?

Ecological Economic Accounts provides a formula for how we can actively protect and restore  our ecological biodiversity. Rather than simply give value to what we extract, we can also account for the cost of environmental damage, revalue our food and water security and our well being?  

Value and costs are tricky because they are terms that can slip in and out from being measured with money. Not everything that one buys is valuable, while what has the most value can often not be monetized no matter how much investment markets try to assign a monetary value on our public and existential goods.

If we approach the world as a commodity, then it is only the few who expend capital that are setting the costs by placing its value in the marketplace.

And if the few who expend capital enforces the commodification of the world, then it is we in the world that has to change what things are worth.

National accounting is supposed to mirror our economy, our society, our interactions. If GDP is the standard by which we measure our economy, it is obvious we have no place in it.  If we do not manufacture, if our populations are too small to have a viable well rounded labor source, if our production capacity is limited to just a few resources like coconuts, shells or fish bones, if the transport of our goods across borders cost too much, if we do not have an aircraft carrier, then clearly we are not looking at ourselves in a mirror. We are not seeing who we are, that we are all Pacific voyagers.