Environmental-economic accounting for water and its contribution to water resources management, planning, and SDG 6

Abstract

Despite the importance of water resources to society, there are several gaps in the availability of data to support the public policy decision-making process domain. In this context, the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting for Water (SEEA-Water) is a tool used for water resources management and planning. Its main goal is to harmonize and standardize of hydrological and economic data using the same conceptual framework. This framework is based on tables and indicators, following the System of National Accounts (SNA), as regularly published by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The SEEA-Water has been adopted to provide strategic information systematically and reliably to support the decision-making process considering the water resource management challenges at the national and subnational scale. This paper discusses the main contribution of SEEA-Water to water resources planning and management. Moreover, SEEA-Water's contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) monitoring is presented considering the information that is obtained directly from the SEEA framework and/or adapted for the SEEA and the SDG 6 integration, or even as a support for the monitoring of the goals and objectives linked with SDG 6. Finally, the broader characteristics of frameworks such as SEEA-Water are discussed in the context of the Brazilian environmental policy and the advances toward integrating natural capital for the composition of the country's Gross Domestic Product.