Natural assets and natural resources
Natural assets include those components of the natural environment that can be used by humans - either directly, indirectly or potentially and are therefore of value to society. Manufactured natural assets (animals and plants from agriculture, forestry and fishery) are included here as well as natural assets that are not made by humans (wild flora and fauna, soil surface, air, water, mineral resources etc.), insofar as they are under pressure from human activities or deployed for economic use.
One motivation for looking at natural capital is the concern that current economic activities are using and reducing available natural capital faster than it can regenerate.
Improving the management of natural assets, taking into account the sustainable use of resources and the available capacity of natural assets, should ensure their long-term availability for the economy and society.
The purpose and aim of asset accounts for natural resources is to describe the relevant national capital stocks of non-renewable natural resources and in particular, to quantify the changes observed in these capital stocks –whether they are the result of natural processes or economic circumstances – in physical and/or monetary terms.
Within the System of Environmental-Economic Accounts (SEEA), the chapter on asset accounts for natural resources lists seven different environmental components which are covered as natural assets by the relevant accounts. These are: mineral and energy resources, land, soil resources, timber resources, aquatic resources, other biological resources (other than timber and aquatic resources) and water resources.
The purpose of asset accounts for natural resources is to estimate the value of those natural resources that are extracted from the environment to be used within the economic cycle, in order to measure changes in the stocks of the corresponding natural resource. For this purpose, stocks are measured at the beginning of a specific period and all subsequent changes are accounted for in order to obtain the stocks resulting at the end of the period. This measurement can be performed using physical or monetary units.
The aim is to use asset accounts for natural resources in order to describe natural stocks, as far as possible, in physical and monetary terms which are linked to the system of national accounts.