Turkey hosts Regional Natural Capital Accounting Workshop in Istanbul
A
three-day Regional Workshop on Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) opened
in Istanbul today to introduce more than 50 experts from twelve
countries to the rationale for and tools to better monitor, manage, and
enhance the productive use of natural assets in their respective
countries. The workshop will present the methodology for NCA, and will
illustrate it with the cases of water and forest accounts.
Bringing
together experts from Albania, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Tajikistan,
Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, the workshop aims to stimulate
discussion among countries on next steps for incorporating NCA into
policy and development planning in their respective countries.
The
Workshop is organized jointly by Turkey’s Ministry of Development, the
Turkish Statistical Institute, and the World Bank under the auspices of
the Wealth Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services (WAVES)
Partnership Program, in cooperation with Statistics Netherlands, the
U.N. Economic Commission for Europe, and the UNDP.
In opening the Workshop, Martin Raiser, World Bank Country Director for Turkey,said, “Sustainable
economic growth requires that countries build on and maintain their
natural capital. Natural capital accounting is a key tool to facilitate
better decision-making, oriented towards greater economic resilience and
a more efficient use of a country’s natural endowments.”...
In his opening remarks, Mehmet Aktaş, Vice President of the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), stated that at its 44th
Session in 2013 the UN Statistical Committee recognized the System of
Environmental Economic Accounts Central Framework (SEEA-CF) as a useful
measurement framework to inform several policy frameworks, including
green growth, green economy, and sustainable development.
Aktaş stated: “In
addition, the current discussion on the development of Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) as a part of the Post 2015 Development Agenda
presents another important opportunity to place the SEEA together with
the System of National Accounts at the core of the monitoring framework
of the SDGs. Within this scope, NCA would be beneficial for making
policies on the natural resources of our country.”
The
World Bank launched the Global Partnership for WAVES in 2010, providing
technical support to developing countries to implement NCA. The
partnership aims
to promote sustainable development by ensuring that natural resources
are mainstreamed in development planning and national economic accounts.
This global partnership brings together a broad coalition of UN
agencies, governments, international institutes, non-governmental
organizations, and academics to implement Natural Capital Accounting
(NCA) where there are internationally agreed standards, and develop
approaches for other ecosystem service accounts.
WAVES
core implementing countries include Botswana, Colombia, Costa Rica,
Guatemala, Indonesia, Madagascar, the Philippines, and Rwanda. Since
Rio+20, 70 countries, 90 private sector organizations, as well as 17
civil society organizations have expressed their support for NCA.
For more information on WAVES go to www.wavespartnership.org
