| Abstrakt: |
Water accounting seeks to provide comprehensive, consistent and comparable information related to water for policy- and decision-making to promote a sustainable use of water resources as well as equitable and transparent water governance among water users. One of the frameworks for environmental and economic accounting is constituted by the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA), which the United Nations Statistical Commission endorsed as an international standard in 2012. SEEA contains standard concepts, definitions, classifications, accounting rules and accounting tables for producing internationally comparable statistics. This document examines the accounting tables designed by the SEEA accounting framework and investigates the likelihood of the SEEA reflecting the dependence of the fisheries sector on water resources and accounting for fisheries and aquaculture fisheries water uses and requirements. Through the lens of the fisheries sector, a more in-depth understanding of the SEEA framework for water accounting emerges. The SEEA Central Framework and associated complementary systems include different types of water-related accounts to assess: the amount of available water resources (water asset account); the ability of water supply to meet demand (supply and use water account); the occurrence and use of inland water resources (land cover and land use account); the pattern and change in time of current landscapes (land cover change account and land use change account); and the status and conditions of ecosystems and their capability to deliver ecosystem services (ecosystem account and ecosystem services account). This study examines these accounts and identifies the overlooked aspects and underlying assumptions, available data sources for account compilation and limitations in the design and methodology, and it provides suggestions for potential improvements. The resulting lessons learned in water accounting are shared with SEEA practitioners, accountants and statisticians as a contribution to further development and improvement of water accounting for sustainable use of water resources. A more comprehensive water accounting system is expected to facilitate processes and policies aimed at using, recycling and sharing water resources to accommodate water needs of all water-use sectors while enabling the preservation of water sources, aquatic ecosystems and related ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
