Indicators and the System of
Environmental and Economic Accounting
for Water
Regional Workshop on Water Accounting
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
16-18 July 2007
Michael Vardon
United Nations Statistics Division
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Outline
• Audience for indicators
• Relationship of environment to economy
• Pressure-State-Response (Driving forces)
• Key issues and concerns
• Characteristics of Indicators
• Past experience
• Millennium Development Goals
• SEEAW indicators
• Issues for indicator users and producers
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Audiences for information
Public
Politicians
Indicators
Accounting
SNA, SEEA, SEEAW
Researchers
Policy Makers
Strategic planners
Micro data
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The economy and the environment
have a complex, multifaceted
relationship
• Provides economic resources to production
process (e.g. minerals, timber, water,
energy)
• Provides non-economic resources to
production process as well as other uses for
mankind
• Receives wastes from the economy
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A model of interaction: Pressure – State – Response
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Concerns over the level impact the
economy is having on environment
• Depletion of natural resource
(e.g. oil, forests, biodiversity)
• Degradation of natural
resources (e.g. air and water
pollution)
• Potentially catastrophic effects
(e.g. climate change)
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Questions
• Are environmental endowments being used
responsibly.
• Is their use posing a treat to economic
development now?
• Will their unchanged use into the future
pose future threats?
• Who benefits from use, who bares the
cost of use?
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Characteristics of indicators
• Focus on outcomes
• Have an unambiguous 'good' direction
• Be supported by timely data of good quality
• Be available as a time series
• Be sensitive to changes
• Be summary in nature;
• Be capable of disaggregation
• Be interpreted easily by the general reader.
Adapted from Measures of Australia’s Progress 2002
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/aa16f6e99c3078bfca256bdc001223f6!OpenDocument
.
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Millennium Development Goals
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
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MDG: Target 30 – access to
improved drinking water
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MDG:
Target 31 –
access to
improved
sanitation
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Challenges to monitoring and
achieving MDG 7
‘Countries face many difficulties in monitoring the MDG 7
indicators, as well as in the overall goal of making progress on
environmental sustainability.”
“Insufficient availability of data and disaggregated data, lack of
baseline data to act as references, and uncoordinated data
collection inhibit the monitoring of targets set.”
Source: Making Progress on Environmental Sustainability,
12
MDG 7:Steps for improvement
“While the MDG framework is best managed as a group of interrelated targets, MDG 7
warrants particular attention given the weaknesses both in monitoring and in overall
progress. This report presents specific steps to be used in tailoring targets and
indicators for MDG 7. The steps can be followed in the order offered here or in a
different sequence:
1) assess country environmental issues;
2) identify existing priorities;
3) use analytical frameworks to determine additional critical parameters;
4) set country-specific and verifiable targets;
5) select indicators and establish a baseline to track progress;
6) implement monitoring and data gathering systems;
7) analyse and interpret results; and
8) communicate the results to policy makers and the public.
Source: Making Progress on Environmental Sustainability,
13
So for MDG (and other reporting
frameworks) we need…..
• An analytical framework for understanding the relations
between the environment and the economy
• Indicators of these relationships
• Monitoring and data systems to support the framework and
indicators
• To be able analyse and interpret results and communicate
results to policy makers and the public
Integrated environmental and economic accounting provides
this
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Why an accounting approach?
• Encourages the adoption of standards
• Introduces accounting concepts to environmental
statistics
• Improves the quality and usefulness of both economic
and environmental statistics by encouraging
consistency and integration
• Implicitly defines ownership and hence responsibility
for environmental impacts
• Encourages the development of comprehensive data
sets
• Facilitates international comparisons
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Strengths of the accounting
approach
• Organised body of information facilitates integrated
economic-environmental analysis (complements
sustainable development indicators, modelling)
• Comprehensive and consistent, routinely produced
• Provides a system into which monetary valuations of
environmental costs can be incorporated
• Allows trade-offs between the environment and the
economy (and within the economy), overtime and
between locations to be described and analysed
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SEEAW Indicators
(pages 169-183)
1.
2.
3.
4.
Water availability
Water intensity and productivity
Opportunities to increase water supply
Cost and price of water supply and
wastewater treatment services
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Indicators of water availability:
FAO/AQUASTAT
•
•
•
Internal Renewable Water Resources
• “Average annual flow of rivers and recharge of groundwater generated
from endogenous precipitation.” (FAO/AQUASTAT)
External Renewable Water Resources
• “Part of the country’s renewable water resources shared with neighbouring
countries. Total external resources are the inflow from neighbouring
countries (trans-boundary groundwater and surface water inflows), and the
part of the shared lakes or border rivers. The assessment considered the
natural resources generally; if there are reservations in neighbouring
countries, they are called actual resources.” (FAO/AQUASTAT)
Total Natural Renewable Water Resources
• The sum of internal and external renewable water resources. It
corresponds to the maximum theoretical amount of water available for a
country on an average year on a long reference period.”
(FAO/AQUASTAT)
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Indicators of water availability
• Per capita renewable resources
• Ratio between Total renewable water resources and
population size. (WWDR 2003, Margat 1996)
• Annual Withdrawals of Ground and Surface Water as a
Percent of Total Renewable Water/Exploitation index
• The total annual volume of ground and surface water
abstracted for water uses as a percentage of the total
annually renewable volume of freshwater. (UN, 2001)
• Consumption Index
• Ratio between Water Consumption and Total
Renewable Resources. (Margat, 1996)
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Indicators for water intensity and productivity
1. Water use and pollution intensity (physical units)
m3 water/unit of physical output Water use or tons of pollution emitted per
unit of output, such as
Tons
of
pollution/unit
of
--population,
physical output
--number of households, or
--tons of wheat, steel, etc. produced
2. Water and pollution intensity (monetary units)
m3 water/value of output
Water use or tons of pollution emitted per
Tons of pollution/value of output unit of output measured in currency units
3. Water productivity ratios
GDP/ m3 water
Value-added by sector/m3 water
4. Water ‘pollutivity’ ratios
Sector share of pollution/sector
share of GDP
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Indicators for opportunities to increase water supply
1. Return flows
Quantity of return flows by
source
2. Water reuse
Reuse water as share of total
industry water use
Recycled water as share of total
water use by sector
3. Losses
Losses
in
abstraction
and
treatment as share of total water
production
Unaccounted for losses as share
of total water use
May distinguish return flows from treated
return flows (from municipal and
industrial users) from untreated return
flows such as agriculture
May distinguish reuse of water within a
plant from water recycled by municipal
water utility
Both the amount and the reason for these
losses are usually known by the water
utility
These losses occur for a variety of causes
and it is usually not certain how much
each cause contributes
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Indicators for cost and price of water supply and
wastewater treatment
1. Supply cost and price of water
Implicit water price
Volume of water purchased divided by supply
cost
3
Average water price per m by industry Volume of water purchased divided by actual
payments by that industry
Average water supply cost per m 3 by Volume of water purchased divided by cost
industry
of supply to that industry
Subsidy per m3 by industry
Average water price minus average water
supply cost
2. Supply cost and price of wastewater treatment services
Implicit wastewater treatment price
Volume of water treated divided by supply
cost
Average wastewater treatment cost per Volume of wastewater divided by treatment
m3 by industry
cost for that industry
Average wastewater treatment price Volume of wastewater divided by actual
per m3 by industry
payments for treatment by that industry
Subsidy per m3 by industry
Average wastewater price minus average
wastewater supply cost
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Indicators of access to and affordability of water and
sanitation services
1. Access to water and sanitation services
Average daily water consumption by households, differentiating rural and
urban households
Percent of urban households with access to safe drinking water
Percent of rural households with access to safe drinking water
Percent of urban households with access to sanitation services
Percent of rural households with access to sanitation services
2. Affordability of water
Household expenditures for water as % of total expenditures, differentiating
rural and urban
Average price of water to households, differentiating rural and urban
Average price of water for subsistence agriculture (irrigation and livestock
watering)
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Links between the World Water
Development Report Indicators and
SEEAW
• World Water Assessment Programme 2006
• 21 of 38 Indicators can be directly derived from the water
accounts
• An 5 indicators can be partially derived
• 12 cannot be derived but can be included as supplementary
information. Of these
• 4 are social indicators (e.g. urban and rural population)
• 3 are related to land areas and could be derived from
land accounts
• 3 are related to energy and could be derived from
energy accounts
• Remaining 2 relate to ISO 14001 certification
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Key issues for indicator users and
providers
Limited resources mean some important decisions
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
What topics are most important?
What inter-linkages are needed?
Scale (time and space)
Macro v. micro level statistics
Level and change or cause and effect
Accuracy and precision (±0.1%, 1.0% or 10%)
Frequency (e.g. daily, annually or multi-yearly)
Perfection v. realistically deliverable
Benefits and costs of data collection. Where do these occur
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(e.g. now/later, public/private, here/there)?
Recalling …..the economy and
the environment have a complex,
multifaceted relationship
• Provides economic resources to production process
(e.g. minerals, timber, water, energy)
• Provides non-economic resources to production
processes and other uses for mankind
• Receives wastes from the economy
• Need an information system and indicators that
record these relationships in a consistent way
….SEEAW provides this!
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Contact details
Michael Vardon
Adviser on Environmental-Economic Accounting
United Nations Statistics Division
New York 10017 USA
Room DC2 1532
Phone: +1 917 367 5391
Fax: +1 917 963 1374
Email: vardon@un.org
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