SEEA for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

Transcription

1 SEEA for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Global Consultation Comment Form Deadline for responses: 11 January 2016 Please send responses to: Your name: Your country/organization: Contact (e.g. address): Adam Tipper New Zealand/Statistics New Zealand To submit responses please save this document and send it as an attachment to the following address: The comment form has been designed to facilitate the analysis of comments. In Part I general comments on the general style, structure, content and coverage of the chapter are sought. In Part II any technical and other comments should be included.

2 Relevant documents Before submitting responses you are encouraged to read the accompanying draft paper available on the SEEA website SEEA for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries: Draft for global consultation 1 GENERAL COMMENTS In this section please provide general comments on the draft. You may like to consider providing comments on the style and tone, the structure and organisation, the content and coverage, and the general accessibility of the material. Overall, Statistics NZ found the draft manual a valuable source of information on compiling SEEA Agriculture accounts and is a well-produecd document. It has good coverage of all the concepts underpinning SEEA Agriculture, relevance to other frameworks and SEEA manuals, the accounts which can be derived and any issues relating to them, and implementation. The structure of the manual is logical. The manual addresses, at a high level, the topics that we need to consider (such as measurement issues and extensions). The level of detail is sufficient to provide initial guidance for implementing the accounts. The language used throughout the draft manual is consistent internally and with the SEEA Central Framework. This enables for greater coherency between the manuals. The draft is well written and the language is clear and understandable, such that both national accountants and environmental statisticians should be able to understand the document. The Department of Conservation noted some inconsistencies in the draft which need to be examined. For example, it was noted that the draft version of SEEA Agriculture lacks a clear definition of agriculture and what should or should not be included. This became evident in section 4.73, which states that harvesting meat from natural sources is not included, however, paragraph 4.52 states that honey, fur and skin might be sourced from wild animal populations.these, and more examples, are covered in further detail in the attached memo.

3 2 TECHNINAL AND OTHER COMMENTS In the box below please supply any additional comments including those of a more technical nature. Please reference your responses with the relevant paragraph numbers or section numbers. SEEA Agriculture provides a useful framework for the presentation of environmental-economic information related to the agriculture, forestry, and fishing industries. Its focus on the consolidation of environmental-economic data will be advantageous from a customer focused perspective. SEEA Agriculture is data intensive requiring information from multiple data domains to be collated. Many of the sources of data may be non-official. This may raise challenges in terms of ensuring data quality, as in relation to the six dimensions of data quality (relevance, accuracy, timeliness, consistency, accessibility, and interpretability).. Paragraph 5.49 discusses data quality generally stating that it is not usually possible to give a precise estimate of common measures of data quality. Given the range of dimensions of data quality it may be better to think about data quality in a broader conceptual sense rather than to suggest a single data quality metric even exists. Links or reference to the United Nations data quality frameworks information may be useful and would promote the official statistics standard to be applied. Paragraph 5.50 sums up key considerations national accountants face in assessing data quality well. Where non-national accounts data is used, however, such judgements are best reached in consultation with data providers and scientific experts to ensure the data remains meaningful and that any national accounts adjustments are appropriate. We recommend making it clear that such judgements are made in consultation with data providers and scientists. A separate sub-heading on data quality may be warranted as it is buried under modelling, and data quality considerations are broader than those used in modelling. Industry associations and even private organisations collect a significant amount of agricultural data in New Zealand (Dairy NZ, Beef and Lamb NZ, Livestock Improvement Corporation). The first sentence under paragraph 2.15, which is supposed to be about the associations, instead notes the accounting system s significance for government. The document assumes that industry associations are users of data, not compilers. There are a few other areas where industry associations are noted as being less of a focus when developing the draft. We suggest this is rewritten, with Industry Associations given the same importance as everyone else, and with potential benefits to them detailed as well,. eg data on the intensity and maintenance of land compared to productivity per hectare over time data would be of great interest to commercial operators. The Experimental Ecosystem Accounts are regularly referenced, and the Department of Conservation recommend making these more explicit. This integration could be further expanded upon as part of the proposed Tier 3 stage. The Department of Conservation memo again provides more detail on this issue.

4 File Ref Date: 11 January 2016 To: From: Adam Tipper, Senior Analyst, Environmental Statistics, StatsNZ. Nicola Scott, Acting Technical Development Manager, Science and Policy System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA): Agriculture: CONSULTATION DRAFT Purpose The purpose of this memo is to provide Department of Conservation (DOC) comment on the draft SEEA : Agriculture. Background 1. In considering this document, DOC has focused primarily on aspects of the SEEA: Agriculture that relate to the environmental component of the report (i.e. references to stocks and flows of natural resources and the ecosystems that underpin those stocks and flows). 2. The following comments provided comprise two component parts: general comments and more specific text amendments that support those comments (text box 1 refers). General comments: 3. It was noted that the draft version of the SEEA Agriculture lacks a clear definition of agriculture and what should or should not be included. This became evident in section 4.73, which states that harvesting meat from natural sources is not included, however, paragraph 4.52 states that honey, fur and skin might be sourced from wild animal populations. 4. Similarly, it is not clear how and if the harvest of illegal products such as illegal logging and the harvest of poppies for opium production would/should be included. This is potentially a significant issues in some countries. The inclusion of legal medicinal products derived from natural compounds (herbal teas, ivy extracts for cough medicines and more) is also not stated clearly. 5. Furthermore, the definition of Agriculture might necessitate the general inclusion of bioprospecting, as the objectives in the CBD s Access and benefit-sharing approach (ABS approach) includes production and the harvesting of bioproducts. 6. There were also a number of inconsistencies within the draft, e.g. the bush meat example mentioned above. Similarly, box 5.1 (page 120) states that Environmental impacts are currently limited to the volume of greenhouse gas

5 emission from agriculture, forestry and land use, but we note that the inclusion of datasets on Water resources or Soil resources, Table 1.1 (page 13), would/could enable an estimate of the environmental impact on these resources, as well. It might be useful to recommend that someone read the draft document specifically for the purpose of ensuring inherent consistency within the document. Experimental ecosystem service accounting 7. It was noted that the SEEA Agriculture regularly references ecosystem services, the flows of stocks and services from the environment for the human benefit. The SEEA on Experimental Ecosystem Accounting is specifically designed to assess national ecosystem services and ecosystem functions. However, implementation is currently impractical due to insufficient national datasets and lack of scientific consensus on feasible approaches. 8. The draft recognizes the interdependence of agricultural, forested, marine and freshwater environments (SEEA Agriculture) with ecosystem services in several instances, of which only paragraphs 1.29, 1.35, 1.53, 1.54, 1.55, 1.78 and 1.79, are mentioned here. 9. In addition, the SEEA Agriculture explicitly mentions the inclusion of noneconomic benefits (cp. Technical notes, 2 nd bullet point, Box 5.1, p. 120), which is an integral part of the cultural services in the SEEA on Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (EEA). Taking this close interdependence into consideration, creating more explicit linkages between the SEEA Agriculture and SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting is recommended. We have therefore proposed a number of text changes (refer text box 1 below) to this effect. The changes recommended seek to integrate the EEA within the SEEA: Agriculture when and where feasible. 10. Due to the current developmental status of indicators for ecosystem services (and hence the SEEA on Experimental Ecosystem Accounting), encouraging this integration as part of the proposed Tier 3 stage seems most feasible. This approach would also support the purpose of the Tier 3, as outlined in paragraphs 5.16ff. Specifically, this linkage would facilitate the complete and full implementation of the SEEA Agriculture accounts in the long-term (including non-economic data) (5.16), support the modelled estimates of stocks and flows (5.18) and provide spatial distribution and sub-national details of data (5.19). Box1: Proposed text changes The SEEA Agriculture does not incorporate the accounting approach described in the SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting, which could should be appropriately applied to agricultural, forestry and fisheries activities. At this stage, however, data to underpin ecosystem accounting including measurement of ecosystem services and ecosystem condition is not sufficiently advanced to be widely implemented at a country level First, in line with the discussion in the SEEA 2012 Experimental Ecosystem Accounting mentioned above, the production functions for individual agricultural products could should, where possible and appropriate, be extended: i) to include inputs of ecosystem services; and ii) to consider the supply of ecosystem services from agricultural areas, forests and fisheries ecosystems to other economic units and to society generally. In the context of agricultural, forestry and fisheries production, ecosystem services are the contributions made by the ecosystem to production. Examples of ecosystem services include pollination,

6 soil retention, water provisioning and nutrient flows. The relevant set of ecosystem services will vary for different agricultural, forestry and fisheries products and for different production processes An emerging area of accounting is ecosystem accounting, an approach described in SEEA 2012 Experimental Ecosystem Accounting. The focus of ecosystem accounting is the state and changing state of ecosystems considered as assets, and the associated flows from ecosystems known as ecosystem services. Given the direct link between agricultural, forestry and fisheries activities and ecosystems, the development of ecosystem accounting is of direct relevance here At this stage the SEEA Agriculture does not extend to consideration of ecosystem assets or ecosystem services. But as testing and development advances, the information in the SEEA Agriculture will become directly relevant in estimating components of the ecosystem accounting framework, particularly the measurement of forests, fisheries, soil resources, water resources and production/extraction activity. As the Experimental Ecosystem Service Accounts become more developed they should be integrated into the Agriculture Accounts as they will provide the underlying stock and flow data needed to account for the status of the natural resource asset base The compilation at Tier 3 will likely require the collection of additional information, for example through the addition of questions to relevant surveys, censuses and evaluation of ecosystem services provision. In view of the resources that would be required for the collection of information, one approach to Tier 3 accounts is to applying benchmarking approaches (see section 5.4) in which detailed data are collected at 3 or 5 year intervals and, in the intervening years, indicator series are used to interpolate and extrapolate the relevant series. This is a form of modelling that is commonly applied in national accounting