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 Australian Bureau of Statistics hosted the first series which focused on Land Accounts, spanning over four sessions discussing the following topics:
- Land use
- Land cover
- Valuation
- Frontier topics like National Park valuation from a Canadian perspective.
These sessions were attended by Federal Government experts across the U.S., AUS and CAN working on Natural Capital Accounting/Environmental Economic Accounting and related statistics.
It was evident that there are some common approaches to methods for producing land accounts between the countries, like utilizing market transactions data for valuation and using Earth observations for modelling. Along with the common approaches, common challenges were also discussed. These included:
- variabilities with earth observations and modelling techniques (e.g., satellite spectral variability, cloud cover and mixed pixel issues);
- accurate classification and mapping of Agricultural land; and
- How to separate out land and structure values, and valuing land resources such as forestry.
Outcomes
This first series of the TWG provided a platform for experts in Land Accounting in the United States, Canada and Australia the opportunity to:
- share information/ dialogue (guided by the UN-SEEA framework),
- solve common challenges and leverage expertise on land 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 May 2024, focusing on Water Accounting.