ARIES researchers have reviewed 23 environmental accounting frameworks and propose a practical approach to connecting environmental data across science, public policy and corporate reporting.
Governments and international organisations rely on environmental information to know how economic activities affect nature and to take action to support sustainability. But despite the growing number of frameworks designed to measure and report this environmental information, the challenge remains in connecting the information.
The new review by Alessio Bulckaen, Juan Ignacio Iguarta Lopez, Ferdinando Villa and Dorleta Ibarra Zuluaga, published in Ecosystem Services, studies the difficulties of accounting frameworks to work together, and propose how they could be better connected.
Accounting frameworks often have definitions and indicators that differ between them, as well as data structures and methods of valuing environmental change. As a result, the information produced for one purpose may be difficult to interpret or reuse in another context. The team reviewed a set of 167 frameworks and, using a structured screening process, selected 23 for detailed analysis. They compared their purposes, implementation mechanisms, recognition and potential to exchange and reuse information, and consulted experts to validate their assessment criteria.
The study identifies three interconnected sources of fragmentation: conceptual, operational and governance-related. Together, these barriers increase the cost of validating information, and limit the ability of decision-makers to compare and reuse the information.
The authors propose an operational harmonisation, improving the connection in existing frameworks. Operational harmonisation would establish shared technical and semantic foundations, allowing data to be exchanged and interpreted consistently while retaining their distinct purposes, institutional mandates and methodological approaches.
“Shared digital infrastructure alone cannot resolve differences in the meaning of environmental indicators. Meanwhile, common definitions have limited impact if organisations lack practical mechanisms for exchanging information” explains Alessio Bulckaen, first author of the review “Therefore, effective harmonisation requires both technical interoperability and institutional cooperation.”
According to the study, interoperable data systems and institutional cooperation could make environmental information more consistent and could help policy-makers connect environmental accounts more effectively with public budgeting and regulatory processes. For companies and financial institutions, this could mean reducing the burden of preparing information for multiple reporting systems. It could also make environmental disclosures easier to compare, supporting more informed decisions about sustainability-related impacts, risks and opportunities.
Among the frameworks examined, the authors point to the United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA), particularly its Ecosystem Accounting framework, as an important reference. SEEA organises data on ecosystem extent, condition and ecosystem services, which helps link ecological research with public policy and decision-making. It can also provide a foundation for making different environmental accounting frameworks work together more effectively. However, the authors emphasise that greater interoperability will also depend on shared data standards, consistent definitions and coordination between the institutions that produce and use environmental information.
Learn more about the study’s findings in the full paper.
