The UN’s System of Environmental-Economic Accounts (SEEA) represents a global effort towards the goal of mainstreaming nature into decision-making. The recently released SEEA Ecosystem Accounting (EA) is the international statistical standard to measure ecosystems, their status and contribution to the economy. These accounts begin with an “Ecosystem Extent Account”, which maps ecosystems distribution and tracks changes over time.

This webinar will demonstrate a low-cost, replicable approach for the identification and mapping of ecosystem extent developed through a partnership between US space agency NASA, Conservation International (CI) and the government of Liberia. The webinar will share results from Liberia, and how these results are supporting planning and decision-making in the country. Last, the webinar will encourage a discussion on how the piloted approach in Liberia can support other countries efforts to develop SEEA-compliant ecosystem extent accounts at the national scale.