Aerial view: Rows of soil before planting. Sugar cane farm pattern in a ploughed field prepared for background

Environmental Assets

Environmental assets are individual components of the environment, such as mineral resources, land, timber and water. Environmental assets can provide flows of natural resources (e.g. extracted mineral ores or harvested timber), which can be measured in physical or monetary terms.

When should I use the Environmental assets section?

Users of the Environmental assets section may wish to measure the quantity and quality of individual environmental assets in a given spatial area, or according to a scope defined by ownership, control or responsibility. They may also wish to measure the flows of benefits that they receive from those environmental assets, in physical and/or monetary terms.

Typical users of this section include organisations that own, control or are otherwise responsible for any individual environmental asset.

Metrics for Environmental assets

Metrics in this section are aligned with the SEEA Central Framework (SEEA-CF) and cover:

Stocks (the ‘state’ of nature)

• Physical quantity (e.g. amount of a mineral resource in tonnes)
• Physical quality (e.g. different grades of a mineral resource)

Flows (benefits derived from nature)

• Physical flows (e.g. amount of excavated soil extracted per year)
• Monetary flows  (e.g. monetary value of excavated soil extracted per year in $)