Ocean Ecosystem

Oceans, are the life sources for our planet and have been proven to be the strong drivers of the Earth’s climate and ecology, occupying more than 70% of the Earth’s surface & holding 97% of its water and supports 80% of its life forms.

It is of omnipotent importance that human well-beings and economic prosperity are dependent, on a healthy ocean, being benefitted by the ocean resources. The ocean produces half of the Earth’s oxygen and absorbs more than 90% of heat from greenhouse gas emissions. It regulates the climate and also facilitates flood control, and protection from natural disasters, natural hazards, and pollution.

On the edges of the ocean, coastal wetlands – such as mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrass meadows protect the shores, along-with drawing in carbon as they grow and store it in their leaves, stems and the rich soils held by their roots. This ‘blue carbon’ (the term for carbon captured by the world’s ocean and coastal ecosystems) can remain in the soil for thousands of years. In fact, coastal wetlands store far greater amount of carbon per hectare than rainforests, helping mitigate climate change. The ocean is thus one of the largest carbon reservoirs on Earth, holding about 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere.

The ocean also plays a crucial role in the global economy as it is an important source of food, energy and other ocean resources. These include traditionally exploited marine resources – either living resources (fish) or non-living resources (oil and gas) – as well as the use of ocean for tourism, research and shipping. Ocean is also critical for the livelihoods of billions of people, as many economic sectors are either directly or indirectly dependent on ocean resources.

Ocean in the context of India:

India has a unique maritime position and a coastline stretching 7,517 km across 09 Coastal States and 04 Union Territories including 02 groups of islands with over 04 million fishermen and other coastal communities. The coastal ecosystems play an important role in the economy contributing significantly to industries like fishing, mining, tourism, transport and tidal energy.

In the present scenario, oceans and marine ecosystems are being impacted by climate change in five major ways: ocean warming, ocean acidification, ocean deoxygenation, rising sea levels, and heat stress. Coastal seas face the broadest array of human pressures and uses, as the rate of pollution and land-use change is greatest near the coast. Potential of the ecosystems is sustainably harnessed, by the checks and balances put in place to counter the negative side-effects of an increase in these industries. This can be effectively done with the help of the Ocean Accounts.

Ocean Ecosystem Accounts:

Ocean Ecosystem Accounts serve as a vital tool for systematically capturing changes in the ocean extent, condition, services and assets over time. By integrating ecological and economic data, these accounts highlight how ocean ecosystems contribute to the economy and society along with the impact of economic activities on these ecosystems.

Our motherland, which is uniquely positioned, encompassed by oceans on three sides, consolidated by a vast coastline and rich marine biodiversity supporting millions of livelihoods, have demonstrated adept accounting strategies in Ocean Accounts.

The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) in accordance with the allocation of Business Rules was constituted for the development of Environment Statistics, with the objective of developing the methodology, concepts and preparation of National Resource Accounts in India (NRAI).

The Ministry constituted a Technical Working Group on Natural Resource Accounting (NRA) in 1997, under the aegis of MoSPI which had conducted several studies during the period 1999 – 2000.

But, inspite of having vast richness of findings, these research studies could not be concretised into a full -fledged accounts due to their lack of comparability in the methods and definitions used, which limited their aggregation. Later on, in 2011, in order to help the development of Environmental Economic Accounts, a high level Expert Group was constituted under the chairmanship of Prof. Sir Partha Dasgupta. The Expert Group submitted its report titled ‘Green National Accounts in India – A Framework’ in 2013 and recommended compilation of the accounts envisaged in the System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA).

Realising the need to adopt a common framework for international acceptability, MoSPI initiated the compilation of environmental accounts following the SEEA Framework in 2018. Since then, MoSPI has been regularly releasing accounts on Environment. In the document titled ‘Strategy for Environmental Economic Accounts in India: 2022 – 2026’, released in 2021, some of the potential areas those which were triggered in line with national priorities are Material Flow Accounts, Ocean Accounts, Energy Accounts, and Thematic Accounts for Biodiversity and Urban Areas.

On July 11, 2023, MoSPI established the “Expert Group on Ocean Ecosystem Accounts” comprising members from various sectors to review global methodologies, develop a national framework, recommend indicators and data sources, and identify ocean-related ecosystem services and valuation techniques. The framework seeks to enhance decision – making processes and sustainable ocean management in India by standardising available data into reliable integrated indicators of policy relevance. The framework for ocean ecosystem accounting in India is comprehensive, including ecosystem extent accounts, condition accounts, asset accounts, and services accounts. Each component is designed to capture the complexities of marine ecosystems and their contributions to human well-being. This framework adheres to the international standards set by United Nations System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA), providing a structured approach that encourages collaboration among various stakeholders.

Some of the ocean ecosystems that have been identified for ecosystem accounting include mangroves, coral reefs, seagrass, lagoons, sandy coast, coastal ocean water and estuaries. The framework for the Ocean Extent Accounts provides vital information about the spatial distribution of marine ecosystems, providing vital information about their size, location, changes over time and the impact of human activities. The Ocean Condition Accounts framework focuses on assessing the health of these ecosystems through key indicators, such as salinity, pH, temperature, nutrients etc. The framework promotes a tiered approach to accounting, where Tier 1 parameters represent essential indicators that can be consistently monitored, while Tier 2 parameters are ecosystem-specific which may be compiled depending on the data availability. The framework for the Ocean Ecosystem Services Accounts categorise the various benefits derived from marine ecosystems, such as fish and fuel (provisioning services), climate regulation (regulatory services) and recreation and tourism (cultural services). Quantifying these services, allows the economy and stakeholders to acknowledge the economic and social value of healthy ocean ecosystems.

The significant contribution of ocean and coastal resources to India’s economic output, the Government of India’s Vision of New India by 2030 enunciated in February 2019 highlighted ‘Blue Economy’ as one of the ten core dimensions for growth. Further, the Draft Policy Framework on India’s Blue Economy, released in September 2020, identified seven priority areas for strengthening India’s Blue Economy, where the development of a robust mechanism for a National Accounting Framework for Blue Economy and Ocean Governance is outlined as its first priority. In the recent past, significant thrust has been given to the development of Coastal and Marine Spatial Plans for various regions in India (such as Puducherry, West Bengal, Lakshadweep, etc.), and to the preparation of framework and action plan for the National Coastal and Marine Spatial Plan. Further, the Ocean Accounts have a synergetic association with the ongoing Environmental – Economic Accounting work in India.

India joined the Global Ocean Accounts Partnership (GOAP) in 2020 to gear up the compilation of Ocean Accounts. In addition, the National Statistical Office (NSO), India, and the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), GoI have together joined the Working Group on Ocean Accounts constituted by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) for development of Global Ocean Accounts Framework.

As an important step towards operationalising the Ocean Accounts in India, the NSO, MoSPI organised a brainstorming session in collaboration with the Ministry of Earth Sciences in November, 2022 at the National Centre for Coastal Research (NCCR), Chennai. The deliberations of the brainstorming session essentially focussed on approaches to the use of existing database to gauge the health of oceans, assess the flow of services provided by them, identify data gaps, and development of the condition accounts for the oceans, challenges for ocean accounting and global best practices in addressing these challenges, among various other issues.

As reiterated, Ocean Accounts are integrated records of regularly compiled and comparable data concerning ocean environment conditions (e.g., extent/ condition of mangroves), economic activity (e.g., sale of fish) and social conditions (e.g., coastal employment). Using the accounting principles and structures described in the System of National Accounts (SNA) and System of Environment Ecosystem Accounts (SEEA), Ocean Accounts describe:

● The interactions between the economy and the environment;

● Stocks and changes in the stocks of environmental assets (natural capital) that provide benefits to people;

● Flows of services and benefits to society (including businesses and people) and the distribution of those benefits; and

● Social and governance factors affecting the status and condition of environmental assets and associated benefits.

Given the high policy demand for ocean accounting and the global importance of the ocean economy, several methodological documents such as the draft Ocean Accounting Frameworks and Technical Guidelines have been developed. Some of the relevant frameworks are described below:

• System of National Accounts (SNA): is the international statistical standard that countries use to measure the economy within the production boundary. It produces a well-understood set of macro-economic indicators, including Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Many of the concepts such as exchange value, residence principle, etc., practiced by SEEA have been resonant with that of the SNA.

• System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA): is the globally recognised statistical standard for organising environmental information in accounting framework for decision-making. The SEEA provides a framework for the measurement of the environment as an asset that produces material stocks, flows and services. It comprises two main documents: the SEEA Central Framework (SEEA CF) and the SEEA Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA). The SEEA Ecosystem Accounting (EA) has a dedicated section on Ocean accounting, which highlights the building on the SEEA ecosystem extent, condition and service flow accounts, the Ocean Accounts Framework adds accounts for natural resources and pressures on oceans from the SEEA Central Framework and accounts concerning the ocean economy, concerning governance, management and technology. The SEEA suggests compiling accounts for coastal and marine ecosystems as well as pressures on the ocean in line with SEEA EA and SEEA CF respectively.

• Global Ocean Accounts Partnership (GOAP): defines Ocean Accounts as a structured compilation—of consistent and comparable information: maps, data, statistics and indicators — concerning marine and coastal environments, including related social circumstances and economic activity.

• UNCEEA Working Group on Ocean Accounts: proposal to establish a working group to draft a methodological document for ocean accounting, SEEA Ocean, in support of the SEEA Central Framework and SEEA Ecosystem Accounting. The framework suggested in this report broadly focuses on the different aspects of SEEA EA Ocean Accounts Framework. SEEA EA suggests following accounts to be included for ocean ecosystem accounts:

• Ecosystem Extent Accounts: To track the size of ecosystem assets in terms of spatial area;

• Ecosystem Condition Accounts: To measure the quality of an ecosystem by tracking indicators of ecosystem health through the ecosystem’s abiotic and biotic components;

• Physical Ecosystem Service Flow Accounts: To record the supply of ecosystem services by ecosystem assets and the use of those services by economic units such as households;

• Monetary Ecosystem Service Flow Accounts: To record the value of ecosystem services in monetary terms based on prices for individual ecosystem services; and

• Monetary Ecosystem Asset Accounts: To record the value of stocks of assets given the expected flow of ecosystem services over a specified time horizon, and changes in asset degradation and enhancement projected over that time horizon.

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