Table of Contents

Core Ocean Statistics

Background

• There is a need for a comprehensive list of statistics collectable by all countries that form the basis of ocean accounts and inform on overall ecosystem condition and value.

• These topics must be equally weighted in order to connect environmental assets, flows to the environment, flows to the economy, and governance factors related to the ecosystem in question and provide decision-making capabilities to the ocean account end-user.

Challenges

• What are the key, minimum set of core ocean statistics that should be evaluated which captures ecosystem condition, services, and management (governance)?  

• How do we ensure these core ocean statistics maintain a strong power of prediction when considering an account will include several different environment types within the domain (country, municipality, etc.) of interest?

• Can we link these measures back to the SEEA framework and other well-known account structures?

Proposed solutions

• We outline a set of 30 Core Ocean Statistics that are organized by the factors laid out in Figure 1 of the Technical Guidance Manual and detailed in Appendix 6.10. These include Environmental Assets, Flows to the Environment, Flows to the Economy, and Governance.

• These statistics are collectable by most countries or accessible on historical online data platforms (Table 1).

• The statistics (variables, indexes, indicators, and other data types) underpinning each topic will need to be environment-type (ET) specific to ensure the highest power of prediction and be informative at the overall total ecosystem level.

• We propose the specific core ocean statistics for eight different environment types: Coral Reefs, Mangroves, Kelp Forests, Seagrasses, Estuaries/Salt Marshes, Sediment, and Open Ocean (Tables 2 – 9).

• Statistics will be further refined over the course of several focused workshops with scientists, economists, and statisticians with expertise specific to each environment type.

Rationale

• Statistics were chosen from a policy demand point of view and, together, define the most significant aspects of ecosystem condition with respect to economic value and effective management.

• Statistics were chosen with consideration towards feasible reproducibility, strong background in the literature in being informative to specific environment types and having preestablished connections between environment condition and value.

• Measuring these statistics collectively provides strength to decision making processes because they reflect the best and most recent available approaches that define not only environment condition, but the flows between the environment and the economy and the parameters needed to determine if governance policies are effectively managing these flows and conditions.

• The real-time feedback from continuously measuring statistics which collectively inform on condition, flow, and governance provides a strong foundation to enhance policy making decisions regarding a country’s ocean economy.

Core Ocean Statistics Tables

Table 1: Core Ocean Statistics

...