Accounting for People
1. Outcome
This Circular provides guidance on accounting for people in ocean accounts, covering household and community accounts, non-market valuation of ocean ecosystem services, distributional analysis, and subsistence and informal economy treatment, linking the SNA household institutional sector with SEEA-EA beneficiary accounting (Ch. 8) and monetary ecosystem service flows (Ch. 9).
2. Requirements
3. Guidance Material
Content under development.
3.1 Conceptual Framework: Households, Beneficiaries, and Wellbeing
To be completed.
3.2 Non-Market Valuation Methods
To be completed.
3.3 Distributional Analysis
To be completed.
3.4 Subsistence and Informal Ocean Economy
Framework anchor. The System of National Accounts (SNA) 2025 establishes the primary macroeconomic baseline by explicitly placing the own-account production of goods for own final consumption inside the production boundary (SNA 2025, Chapter 6).[1] This mandates that non-market subsistence activities—such as artisanal fishing, gleaning, and informal coastal harvesting—are recorded as productive economic output. The SNA dictates that these non-market outputs should be valued at the basic prices of equivalent market goods or, in the absence of comparable markets, at the sum of costs. This ensures that the informal economy's contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) and household final consumption expenditure is comprehensively recognised, even when monetary transactions do not occur.
To capture the environmental dependency of these subsistence activities, the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting—Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA 2021) provides the required biophysical and spatial extension. Under SEEA EA Chapter 6, the extraction of aquatic resources by informal communities is recorded as a biomass provisioning service.[2] Crucially, SEEA EA Chapter 8 governs the allocation of these ecosystem services to economic units, requiring that unrecorded, non-market harvesting be assigned directly to households as the final beneficiaries.[3] This household-as-beneficiary treatment bridges the gap between ecosystem asset accounts and human wellbeing, isolating the direct ecosystem contribution to informal coastal livelihoods from commercial extraction sectors.
Reconciling the SNA's macroeconomic totals with the SEEA's biophysical flows requires complementary satellite measurement and imputation conventions, specifically those outlined in FAO Fisheries Technical Papers on economic valuation.[4] When local market equivalents are entirely absent, FAO guidelines recommend estimating non-market subsistence values through opportunity cost methods, willingness-to-pay approaches, or substitute pricing models to derive the total economic value (TEV) of the resource. In satellite and extended accounts, these imputed values allow compilers to partition blended informal economy totals into distinct commercial, subsistence, and pure ecosystem-service components without disrupting the core SNA production accounts.
Decision rule for compilers. Compilers must apply the following sequential rule to determine the governing framework:
- Macroeconomic aggregation—Apply the SNA 2025 framework to record the total aggregate volume and imputed value of goods produced for own-consumption to ensure exhaustive GDP and production account completeness.
- Natural capital dependency—Apply the SEEA EA (2021) beneficiary allocation rules to map the underlying ecosystem services (e.g., biomass provisioning) directly to households, supporting sustainability analysis and tracking natural capital depletion.
- Micro-valuation and extended welfare—Utilise FAO/satellite imputation guidelines to monetise specific, unpriced subsistence flows when local market prices are unavailable, primarily for extended welfare analysis, local livelihood mapping, or specialised satellite accounting.
3.5 Linking to SEEA Ecosystem Accounting and SNA Households
To be completed.
4. Acknowledgements
Authors: [To be confirmed]
Reviewers: [To be confirmed]
System of National Accounts (SNA) 2025, Chapter 6—Production account and the production boundary, including own-account production of goods for own final consumption. ↩︎
SEEA Ecosystem Accounting (2021), Chapter 6—Ecosystem services accounting, including biomass provisioning services. ↩︎
SEEA Ecosystem Accounting (2021), Chapter 8—Monetary ecosystem service accounts and allocation of services to economic units, including households as beneficiaries. ↩︎
FAO Fisheries Technical Papers on economic valuation of subsistence and small-scale fisheries, including total economic value (TEV) methods. ↩︎