Bridging the Gap Between National and Ecosystem Accounting Application in Andalusian Forests, Spain

Refined Systems of National Accounts and Experimental Ecosystem Accounting Versus the Simplified Agroforestry Accounting System: Testing in Andalusian Holm Oak Open Woodlands

“…We focused on the following selected ecosystem indicators: (i) ordinary net valued added (NVAo) defined as the aggregation of the values for the compensation of employees, self-employed services, and net operating margin/surplus of the immobilized capital in the creation of the total product consumption in the period (year); and (ii) ecosystem service (ES), change in environmental asset (CEA), adjusted change in environmental net worth (CNWead), and environmental income (EI). In this study of the HOW, we assumed that the physical quantities and valuations at observed market prices for the commercial products and the simulated exchange values for the farmer and government final product consumptions without market prices were available to us [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. These data allowed us to focus on our conceptualization of the structures of the compared ecosystem accounting approaches and on the consistent measurement of the 12 ecosystem services (ES), changes in the environmental assets (CEA), and adjusted change in environmental net worth (CNWead) along with the environmental income (EI) to which the 15 economic activities considered in the Andalusian HOW contribute.…”

“…This research provides three main contributions. Firstly, we defined and measured ecosystem services from an economic perspective as the contribution of nature to the transaction value of the ordinary total product consumption directly or indirectly used by people in the accounting period [3,4,[8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. Total product consumption excludes the final product of own-account gross capital formation, both manufactured and natural growth, and the consumption of the environmental fixed asset (environmental degradation).…”

“…From a more ecological perspective, other authors have added to the latter concept of ecosystem services the condition of being "direct and indirect contributions to sustainable human wellbeing" [18] (p. 8). These varied definitions present a polysemic labyrinth and go beyond our more specific measurement of economic ecosystem services in a manner consistent with the definition of social total income [2][3][4]8,10,19].…”

“…Secondly, the ongoing SEEA-EEA (henceforth EEA for short) incorporates institutional sectors of farmers (corporations) and ecosystems in the sequences of production and income generation accounts [14]. We advocate that consistent measurement of ecosystem services (ES) and environmental assets (EA) requires a refined SEEA-EEA (henceforth rEEA for short) that substitutes the ecosystem institutional sector for the government institutional sector [3,4,8]. In addition, and in order to estimate the environmental income (EI) consistently with social total income, we propose the measurement of the adjusted change in the environmental net worth (CNWead) in accordance with the environmental work in progress utilized (WPeu), inventoried at the opening of the period.…”

“…This application to the Andalusian holm oak open woodlands is the only exception to the absence of the three accounting framework applications at the regional (sub-national) scale. We applied and compared the AAS and rSNA approaches for the measurement of forest lands in the region of Andalusia (including shrublands and grasslands) at producer (market) prices in [3]; for Andalusian holm oak woodlands at social prices in [8]; a group of five, non-industrial, privately owned large cork oak (Quercus suber L.) farms (dehesas) at social prices in Andalusia in [4,24]; and a comparison of the AAS and rSNA (without the timing bias of total net value added) framework results for ecosystem services and incomes at social prices in a group of 16, non-industrial, privately owned large holm oak farms (dehesas) in Andalusia. Campos et al [25] using primary data from [24] incorporated our development of the rEEA Model B methodology [26] and compared it with the methodologies of the rSNA (with the timing bias of ordinary net value added) and the simplified Agroforestry Accounting System (sAAS) to that of total product consumption.…”