Global Ocean Accounts Partnership Secretariat · GOAP Technical Guidance on Ocean Accounting · circular
This Circular addresses the governance design that connects ocean accounting outputs to national planning processes. In the Ocean Accounts Framework (TG-0.1 Figure 0.1.2):
| Edge | Direction | Description |
|---|---|---|
| E7 | SG2→FG1 | Social assets (governance frameworks) enabling economic flows |
| E8 | SG2→FG2 | Social assets (governance arrangements) enabling social activities |
After reading this Circular, planning officials will be able to get ocean account outputs into national development plans, blue economy strategies and international reporting on time and in a usable form. Its subject is the flow of outputs into the planning cycle: which output a planning authority needs at each entry point, in what form, and by when.
Section 3.1 sets out the entry points — situation analysis, priority setting, target setting in a blue economy strategy, and monitoring and evaluation — and Section 3.2 states what each requires and the three failure modes that recur: the output arrives after the decision, the output is a table when it needed to be a finding, and targets are set in terms no account can verify. Section 3.3 covers international reporting architectures from the planning-integration side, where the case for the compilation budget is usually made.
The institutional arrangements that produce the accounts are outside this Circular. Coordination models, champions and regional platforms are treated in TG-0.8 Implementation Readiness Assessment Sections 3.5 and 3.9; data-sharing agreements, technical working groups and platform design in TG-4.7 National Data Coordination Architectures; and how governance arrangements are themselves measured and recorded in TG-3.7 Governance Accounts. Indicator derivation for SDG, GBF and climate reporting is TG-2.10 Multilateral Environmental Agreement Indicators.
Ocean accounts generate outputs that cut across the mandates of multiple agencies. SEEA EA Chapter 13 notes that an “integrated and standardized set of accounts” can support balanced decisions across social, environmental and economic dimensions. That integration does not happen automatically, and it does not happen at all if the output reaches the planning authority after the plan is written.
Essential prerequisites:
Helpful background:
Readers approaching Section 1 for the first time should begin with TG-1.0 Ocean Accounting and the Blue/Ocean Economy, the framing circular for the section, which sets out the ocean economy terminology used throughout, what an ocean account can and cannot certify about a blue economy claim, and the map from a policy question to the circular that answers it. It is recommended reading, not a prerequisite.
National development plans establish a country’s medium- to long-term priorities for economic growth, social development, and environmental management. These plans set the strategic direction that annual budgets, sectoral strategies, and international commitments are expected to follow. For ocean-rich countries — including small island developing States, coastal nations with significant exclusive economic zones, and countries whose economies depend substantially on marine resources — the absence of ocean-related information from national development plans can result in planning frameworks that systematically undervalue marine natural capital and fail to account for the sustainability of ocean-dependent economic activities.
The 2025 SNA’s new chapters on well-being and sustainability (Chapters 34-35) identify other dimensions of well-being and sustainability that “can be addressed through a suite of thematic and extended accounts”. Ocean accounts are precisely such a thematic account, providing standardised data on marine natural capital stocks, ocean ecosystem service flows, and the depletion-adjusted economic contribution of ocean sectors that development plans should consider.
The Wealth Accounting and the Valuation of Ecosystem Services (WAVES) partnership (2012—2021) demonstrated that natural capital — including fisheries, mangroves, coral reefs, and other marine assets — should be treated alongside produced and human capital when assessing a country’s total wealth and development trajectory. WAVES activities were subsequently transitioned to the Global Program on Sustainability (GPS), hosted at the World Bank. Ocean accounts extend this approach to the marine domain, providing the specific data structures needed to incorporate ocean wealth into national wealth assessments.
National development plans typically follow a multi-year cycle comprising situation analysis, priority setting, strategy formulation, implementation programming, and monitoring and evaluation. The governance design must ensure that account outputs are available in the right format at the right time. The most important entry points are:
Situation analysis and diagnostics. At the outset of a planning cycle, governments assess the current state of the economy, society, and environment. Ocean accounts provide a structured evidence base for this assessment across three account types:
The governance coordination body (the coordination arrangements are in TG-0.8 Implementation Readiness Assessment Section 3.5) should ensure that a “state of the ocean economy” synthesis is prepared and submitted to the planning authority during the diagnostic phase.
Priority setting and resource allocation. Depletion-adjusted ocean GVA calculations (see TG-1.1 Section 3.4) provide the evidence needed to argue that resource management investment is a precondition for sustaining the ocean economy’s contribution to national income. If fish stock accounts record declining biomass, or ecosystem extent accounts record mangrove loss, these trends should be reflected in planning priorities alongside more conventional economic indicators.
Monitoring and evaluation. Because accounts are compiled on a regular cycle using consistent methods, they generate comparable time series that track progress against plan targets. The indicators derivable from ocean accounts — including ocean economy GDP share, fish stock biomass trends, ecosystem extent changes, and depletion-adjusted income measures — can serve as headline indicators for ocean-related development plan objectives. This approach aligns with SEEA EA Chapter 14’s guidance that the coherence of information across accounts is particularly important when indicators are designed to support national sustainability policies.
A blue economy strategy is a national policy framework or strategic plan that designates marine and coastal resources as priorities for sustainable economic development. The guidance in this section applies equally to standalone blue economy strategies and to blue economy chapters embedded in broader national development plans. Many countries — including Seychelles and Kenya — have adopted standalone strategies, whilst others integrate blue economy objectives directly into their national development plans. A more developed conceptual architecture for the blue economy, including the linkages between blue economy measurement and national statistical frameworks, is set out in the World Bank (2022) Blue Economy Development Framework.
A blue economy strategy grounded in ocean accounts can specify targets in terms of measurable account entries: (1) ocean economy GVA growth rates that do not exceed sustainable yield limits, (2) ecosystem extent targets for mangrove restoration or marine protected area expansion, and (3) condition thresholds for coral reef health or water quality that must be maintained as ocean industries expand. See TG-2.5 Structure and Function of the Ocean Economy for the account structures that underpin blue economy measurement.
The governance coordination body should ensure that the national statistical office (NSO) or designated compilation agency is formally tasked with producing the account outputs needed to monitor blue economy strategy targets. This requires a standing arrangement — not a one-off data request — that links the accounting compilation cycle to the strategy’s reporting cycle. The coordination models in TG-0.8 Implementation Readiness Assessment Section 3.5.1 provide options for establishing this standing arrangement.
A persistent challenge in using environmental-economic accounts for planning is the lag between the reference period of the accounts and the planning decisions they are intended to inform. Many countries compile national accounts with a one- to two-year lag, and environmental accounts may face additional delays due to the complexity of ecosystem data collection. Countries should address this timing challenge through three strategies.
First, establish a regular compilation schedule aligned with the planning cycle. The coordination body should establish a release date that provides sufficient lead time for analytical synthesis ahead of the planning review diagnostic phase, typically six months or more, subject to national planning cycles. Second, consider producing provisional or “flash” estimates for the most recent period, following the approach used by many NSOs for preliminary GDP estimates. Even approximate figures for the latest year are more useful for planning than precise figures that arrive after decisions have been made. Third, use asset account projections to extend the time horizon beyond the latest available data. The asset account structure (opening stock, additions, reductions, closing stock) supports forward projection under alternative policy scenarios, as demonstrated in the MTEF integration procedures described in TG-1.1 Section 3.6.
The binding constraint on planning integration is rarely whether the accounts exist. It is whether the right output reaches the right forum in the window when it can affect the decision. Table 2 sets out what that requires at each entry point.
Table 2: Account outputs by planning-cycle entry point
Three failure modes recur, and all three are avoidable.
The output arrives after the decision. National accounts commonly lag one to two years, and environmental accounts often more. Where the lag exceeds the planning window, provisional or flash estimates for the most recent period are more useful than precise figures that arrive too late, provided they are labelled as provisional and subject to revision. The alternative — supplying nothing — means the plan is written against whatever numbers are to hand, which are usually worse.
The output is a table when it needed to be a finding. A planning authority in a diagnostic phase cannot use an account table. It can use a statement that the ocean economy contributes a stated share of GDP, that the share is growing whilst the asset base underlying it is not, and what that implies for the growth targets under consideration.
Targets are set in terms the accounts cannot verify. A target expressed as “improve marine ecosystem health” cannot be monitored from any account. A target expressed as an extent in hectares, a condition index against a stated reference, or catch against sustainable yield can be, and is checked automatically by the next compilation.
Asset accounts also support projection beyond the latest available data. The opening-stock, additions, reductions, closing-stock structure allows forward projection under alternative policy scenarios, which is what extends the evidence to the plan’s horizon (see TG-1.1 Section 3.6 for the MTEF case and TG-2.1 Section 3.6.2 for condition trajectories).
Countries face a growing set of international reporting obligations that draw on ocean data — the SDGs, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the Paris Agreement, regional fisheries bodies, and the BBNJ Agreement. The mapping from account entries to each indicator is set out in TG-2.10 Multilateral Environmental Agreement Indicators, which is normative for indicator derivation across all of these frameworks.
The planning-integration point is narrower, and is worth stating separately because it is where the investment case is usually won. SEEA EA para 14.28 notes that ocean accounts allow a country to report to multiple monitoring frameworks from a single coherent database. Mapping the country’s obligations against the account entries that serve them has two effects: it demonstrates that one compilation programme serves several reporting commitments at once, which strengthens the budget case; and it exposes duplication, where the same fish stock data are currently compiled separately for SDG 14.4.1, for RFMO reporting and for domestic fisheries management. Consolidating those into one compilation reduces workload and removes the inconsistencies that arise when the same underlying quantity is reported three times from three processes.
Whoever coordinates the accounting programme should ensure the national SDG focal point, the CBD focal point and the UNFCCC focal point are each connected to the compilation cycle, so that indicator reporting draws on the accounts rather than running a parallel data collection.
Authors: [To be confirmed]
Reviewers: [To be confirmed]
Cite this report
OA and National Planning Integration (2026) (GOAP Technical Guidance on Ocean Accounting, TG-1.10, v0.8.2). GOAP Secretariat. https://guidance.oceanaccounts.org/circulars/section-1/1-10-national-planning/
guidance.oceanaccounts.org/circulars/section-1/1-10-national-planning
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