The System of Environmental-Economic Accounting 2012—Central Framework (SEEA Central Framework) is a statistical framework consisting of a comprehensive set of tables and accounts, which guides the compilation of consistent and comparable statistics and indicators for policymaking, analysis and research.
In response to the policy demands from the World Commission on Environment and Development—or Brundtland Commission—(1983-1987) and, subsequently, Agenda 21 (1992), the 1993 Handbook of National Accounting: Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA 1993) was developed. All countries areencouraged to compile their environmental-economic accounts on the basis of the SEEA-Central Framework, to report statistics derived from it and to continue to work together to address the remaining challenges in this domain to provide an even more comprehensive set of environmental-economic accounts. Land is central to economic and environmental accounting. Some of the issues that
can be considered in the context of land accounts, beyond an assessment of the ownership and use of land as part of economic production, include the impacts of urbanization, the intensity of crop and animal production, afforestation and deforestation, the use of water resources, and other direct and indirect uses of land. The LAND section is structured to define the scope of land accounts and define two primary aspects of land for environmental accounting purposes: land use and land cover. A distinction is made between additions and reductions due to changes in land cover (e.g., loss of soil resources for agriculture as a result of urban expansion, also known as soil alienation or soil sealing); those due to changes in soil quality (e.g., after compaction or acidification); and those due to changes in the soil environment (e.g., due to desertification or land clearing). In practice, distinguishing between these different types of changes may be difficult and the structure of the account should be based on highlighting the primary reasons and the changes of most environmental, economic or social interest.