Current work program

The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water provide national leadership and coordination of Environmental Economic Accounting (EEA) in partnership with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and other delivery partners.

Our work is funded through two key initiatives:

National Ocean Ecosystem Account

Phase 2 of Australia’s first National Ocean Ecosystem Account will focus on saltmarsh and kelp accounts and is scheduled for release by the ABS in late November 2022. This follows phase 1 which provided statistics on Australia’s mangrove and seagrass ecosystems and their climate mitigation and resilience benefits.

Local scale accounts supporting Blue Carbon Ecosystem Restoration Projects

The Blue Carbon Ecosystem Restoration Grants provide funding to implement five on-ground projects that restore degraded coastal wetland ecosystems in Australia. Separate to the grants, funding will be provided to measure and account for the diverse restoration benefits for each project.

Regional ecosystem account for the Murray–Darling Basin

CSIRO have been commissioned to deliver an ecosystem account for the Murray–Darling Basin that will input to the Murray–Darling Basin Outlook Report. The accounts will improve knowledge of dependencies between healthy ecosystems and socioeconomic conditions, with a focus on agriculture and the communities it supports. This project builds on a pilot ecosystem account of the Gunbower-Koondrook-Perricoota Forest Icon Site.

Agricultural and mixed-use Ecosystem accounting pilots

CSIRO have been commissioned to deliver regional ecosystem accounting pilots in South-West WA and northern QLD. The pilots aim to support environmental markets and the scale up of private sector investment in natural capital to underpin profitable and resilient agriculture. This project will also test ecologically sound methods for compiling national ecosystem accounts.

Mining sector ecosystem accounting project

This collaborative project, led in partnership with CSIRO, CRC TiME and mining industry contributors, will deliver accounting case studies and guidance material to assist the mining industry build capacity in natural capital accounting. Two of the four case studies will use EEA to test the beta version of the Task Force on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) framework.

Implementation plan for national oceans accounts

We are developing an implementation plan that will facilitate the roll out of ocean accounts at a national scale. It will be developed in consultation with stakeholders and outline an approach to strategic prioritisation, key delivery partners and the implementation of priority ocean accounts.

EEA Platform

A new web platform is being developed to provide a central resource for EEA in Australia for information sharing, analysis and education. It will allow users to navigate information about EEA and understand its significance and how it can be used. The web platform will host a data visualisation tool that allows users to easily view and analyse EEA data.