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Modifying national accounts for sustainable ocean development

Nature Sustainability volume 3, pages 889–895 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Sustainable development of the ocean economy requires a system for measuring progress. The standard system of national accounting provides a solid foundation for doing so, though the scope requires expansion to adequately cover household-produced services; for example, ocean-based leisure, and the role of natural capital in the ocean economy. The accounts summary needs indicators beyond gross domestic product that enable users to choose what is included. New technologies make digital dashboards of indicators easy to produce. Such dashboards facilitate rapid comparison of indicators that cannot be aggregated into a single metric, which enables national ocean accounts to coherently present physical and monetary data.

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Fig. 1: The three objectives of blue economic development.
Fig. 2: Filters that national accounting concepts must pass through to make it to practice.
Fig. 3: Example of a live interactive digital dashboard for Norway.

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Acknowledgements

Support was provided by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy. This research is adapted from a Blue Paper commissioned by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy entitled ‘National Accounting for the Ocean and Ocean Economy’. E.P.F. and E.T.A. were additionally supported by the Knobloch Family Foundation. The views expressed in this paper are the authors’ views, and they do not represent the views of their respective organizations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Eli P. Fenichel & Ethan T. Addicott

  2. Statistics Norway, Oslo, Norway

    Kristine M. Grimsrud

  3. The World Bank, Washington DC, USA

    Glenn-Marie Lange

  4. Independent researcher, Edinburgh, UK

    Ina Porras

  5. University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Ben Milligan

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  1. Eli P. Fenichel
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  2. Ethan T. Addicott
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  3. Kristine M. Grimsrud
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  4. Glenn-Marie Lange
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  6. Ben Milligan
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Contributions

E.P.F. lead the project and writing, E.T.A. developed the dashboard in Fig. 3, and all authors contributed to writing and editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eli P. Fenichel.

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Fenichel, E.P., Addicott, E.T., Grimsrud, K.M. et al. Modifying national accounts for sustainable ocean development. Nat Sustain 3, 889–895 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0592-8

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