Global Ocean Accounts Partnership Secretariat · GOAP Technical Guidance on Ocean Accounting · circular
This Circular addresses how private sector corporations use nationally compiled Ocean Accounts data to identify nature-related dependencies and impacts, inform disclosure under TNFD and IFRS S1, and integrate ocean risk into capital allocation and supply chain decisions. It sits at the intersection of the public finance guidance in TG-1.7 OA and Multilateral Development Finance and TG-1.8 OA and Project-Level Finance and the investment indicator compilation in TG-2.6 Ocean-related Investment, extending both toward the enterprise level.
After reading this Circular, corporate sustainability officers, chief risk officers and ocean-sector business analysts will be able to use nationally compiled Ocean Accounts as a structured data source for private sector decision-making: nature-related financial disclosure, supply chain risk assessment, capital allocation and corporate strategy. The Circular explains how national account outputs translate into enterprise-relevant signals about ocean dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities.
Section 3.2 works the TNFD LEAP process through phase by phase, naming the account each phase draws on. Section 3.3 is the publication’s single source for the mapping between account outputs and the TNFD, IFRS S1 and CSRD disclosure requirements. Section 3.4 covers supply chain exposure, Section 3.6 capital allocation and ocean opportunity, and Section 3.7 scans applications still at an early stage.
Section 3.5 addresses the constraint that governs all of it: national accounts are compiled at country or large sub-national scale, whilst corporate reporting requires site-level data. The disaggregation and attribution methods are specified in TG-3.11 Sub-National Ocean Accounts Sections 3.1 to 3.4; what this Circular sets out is what a firm must ask of the national statistical office before relying on a disaggregated figure, and which services support a defensible attribution rather than a contribution estimate.
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.
Private sector actors are ocean-dependent across a wider range of industries than is commonly recognised. The ocean economy accounts for approximately USD 1.5 trillion of value added per year globally (2010 baseline estimate), supporting over 30 million full-time equivalent jobs. It spans fisheries, aquaculture, marine transport, offshore energy, coastal tourism, marine biotechnology, and coastal construction. The economy-wide dependencies extend well beyond these direct-use sectors, as documented in TG-2.2 Macro-economic Dependencies on Ocean Ecosystems. Marine and coastal ecosystems supply services that underpin land-based economic activities. Coastal ecosystems provide storm and flood protection that reduces insurance losses and infrastructure costs. Ocean carbon cycling regulates climate stability that shapes agricultural productivity. Marine biodiversity underpins pharmaceutical discovery, and ocean fisheries supply protein that supports global food system resilience.
The TNFD defines nature-related risks as “the potential threats posed to an organisation as a result of its or others’ dependencies and impacts on nature.” These risks manifest as:
Ocean Accounts provide the systematic baseline data against which these risks can be assessed. These accounts compile spatially explicit stock and flow information about ocean natural capital at the national and subnational level, the scale at which physical and transition risks originate.
A seafood processor with sourcing operations in a coastal country can cross-reference its sourcing locations with national ecosystem condition accounts to identify whether fish stocks and water quality indicators in those areas are stable, declining, or recovering. Unavailable at the project or firm level, this systemic data anchors a TNFD LEAP assessment in nationally standardised information, which ad hoc monitoring data cannot supply on its own.
The TNFD recommends that organisations use its LEAP process (Locate, Evaluate, Assess, Prepare) to identify and assess nature-related issues across their business activities and value chains. Each phase of LEAP can be structured using Ocean Accounts data. Figure 1.11.1 illustrates how the different Ocean Account types feed each LEAP phase as a many-to-many relationship rather than one account per phase, distinguishing the principal account input for each phase from account types also drawn upon.
· Figure 1.11.1
Source TG-1.11 §3.2.1--3.2.4 (LEAP-Ocean Account interface); Tables 3.2.2 and 3.3.1; §3.4 (supply chain ocean risk).
The first LEAP phase requires identifying where in the world business activities and value chains interact with ocean and coastal ecosystems. Ocean Accounts support this phase through:
The second LEAP phase evaluates the nature of the firm’s dependencies on, and impacts to, ocean ecosystems at the identified interfaces. Ocean Accounts support this phase through two complementary pathways. The account types referenced here are compiled using the methods described in TG-3.1 Asset Accounts.
Dependency assessment draws on ecosystem service supply and use tables to quantify the contribution of marine natural capital to business inputs. Key dependency types for ocean-adjacent sectors include:
Table 3.2.2: Ocean ecosystem dependencies by sector and relevant Ocean Account components.
Impact assessment draws on physical flow accounts (pressures) to quantify the firm’s contribution to changes in ocean ecosystem state. The TNFD defines impacts as “changes in the state of nature (quality or quantity), which may result in changes to the capacity of nature to provide social and economic functions.” Ocean Accounts record the aggregate pressure signals, such as total nutrient loading, total extraction volumes relative to sustainable yield, and total extent change, against which individual firm contributions can be contextualised. For firms where ecosystem impacts require formal assessment, the methodological bridge between project-level environmental impact assessment and nationally compiled account baselines is described in TG-1.6 OA and Environmental Impact Assessment.
The third LEAP phase translates dependency and impact findings into material risks and opportunities. Ocean Accounts support risk quantification in two ways.
Trend-based risk signals: Time-series accounts reveal whether ocean natural capital is stable, declining, or recovering. A firm whose supply chain depends on coral reef-based tourism can read declining coral condition indicators, compiled across national extent and condition accounts, as a direct signal of increasing physical risk to its revenue base, without needing to commission bespoke environmental monitoring.
Valuation of service dependencies: Monetary ecosystem service accounts compile exchange-value estimates of the economic contribution of marine natural capital to production. These valuations show the scale of the economic contribution at stake from ecosystem degradation. They are not estimates of the financial loss a firm would bear, which depends on how far and how fast a service declines and on the firm’s own exposure and response. A coastal hotel group can, for example, use the replacement cost of coral reef coastal protection services (compiled in the monetary ecosystem service flow account), scaled to the stretch of coast it occupies, as a starting point for estimating the capital cost of the engineered protection it would need if reef degradation removed that natural protection; its insurance costs depend instead on expected storm damage at its own sites.
Alongside risk quantification, the Assess phase identifies nature-related opportunities. For private sector actors, ocean-related opportunities include:
The fourth LEAP phase translates assessment findings into disclosures, strategies, risk management actions, and targets. Section 3.3 addresses disclosure frameworks, and Section 3.4 addresses capital allocation and targets.
Three parallel disclosure trajectories are converging toward a common set of requirements: voluntary (TNFD), standards-based (IFRS), and regulatory (CSRD/ESRS). This section is the single source for the mapping between ocean account outputs and disclosure requirements; TG-1.7 and TG-1.8 cross-refer to it rather than restating it. Ocean Accounts compiled at the national level provide the population-level data that makes corporate disclosures internationally comparable and independently verifiable.
The TNFD September 2023 recommendations specify 14 disclosures structured around four pillars: Governance, Strategy, Risk and Impact Management, and Metrics and Targets. For ocean-dependent or ocean-affecting businesses, the most material disclosures map directly onto Ocean Account components. The table below lists the disclosures of greatest relevance to ocean contexts. Firms should consult the full TNFD recommendations for the complete set of 14 required disclosures.
Table 3.3.1: TNFD recommended disclosures most relevant to ocean-dependent businesses (selected from the full set of 14 recommended disclosures).
The three Governance disclosures (Gov A: Board oversight of nature-related issues; Gov B: Management’s role in assessing and managing nature-related issues; Gov C: human rights policies and engagement with Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities and affected stakeholders) are structural governance requirements that apply uniformly across all sectors and are not specific to Ocean Account data inputs. Similarly, Risk B (processes for managing nature-related issues) and Risk C (integration into overall risk management) describe internal management systems rather than ecosystem data requirements, and are omitted from the table. The nine disclosures shown above are those where Ocean Account data provides the most direct input.
The TNFD also defines additional global disclosure metrics relevant to ocean contexts, including metrics for water quality, marine ecosystem extent, and the value of sustainable finance instruments. Ocean Account condition and extent tables provide a direct data source for these metrics, converting nationally standardised environmental monitoring data into enterprise-level disclosure inputs.
Sector-specific TNFD pathways: The TNFD has published sector-specific additional guidance for a range of sectors including aquaculture, fisheries, marine transport, and coastal infrastructure, among others. These sector pathways cross-reference SEEA EA concepts directly, making Ocean Accounts a natural data input to sector-aligned TNFD reporting.
IFRS S1 (General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information), issued June 2023 and effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2024, establishes that sustainability-related information should be material to the primary users of general-purpose financial reports — investors, lenders, and other creditors. Application is voluntary or jurisdiction-dependent, as national adoption by securities regulators is required for mandatory application. Nature-related dependencies and impacts qualify as material when they affect an entity’s cash flows, access to finance, or cost of capital. (IFRS S2 on climate-related financial information is a separate standard. For ocean-climate accounting connections, see TG-2.8 Climate Change Indicators.)
For ocean-dependent businesses, material nature-related information under IFRS S1 typically includes:
Ocean Accounts provide the population-level time series against which entity-level IFRS S1 disclosures can be contextualised and verified.
The European Union’s CSRD (in force from January 2024 for large listed companies, with phased application extending to 2026 for smaller in-scope entities) requires companies to conduct a double materiality assessment: evaluating both how sustainability matters affect the company (financial materiality) and how the company affects sustainability matters (impact materiality). The European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) elaborate specific requirements for biodiversity and ecosystem-related disclosures under ESRS E4 (Biodiversity and Ecosystems).
ESRS E4 requires disclosure of:
Ocean Accounts compiled for coastal and marine areas provide a direct data source for ESRS E4 compliance by European companies with ocean-facing operations or supply chains. Condition indicators from national ecosystem accounts can populate the ecosystem condition metrics required under ESRS E4, whilst extent accounts document changes in marine habitat area attributable to sectors in which a company operates.
Across TNFD, IFRS S1, and CSRD, the common requirement is for ecosystem baseline data that is spatially explicit, compiled against recognised methodologies, and comparable across time. Firm-level environmental monitoring data cannot meet all three requirements at once. Nationally compiled Ocean Accounts can.
This section provides templates for deriving impact indicators from Ocean Accounts that satisfy the requirements of three major frameworks: the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards (S1 and S2), and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Global Biodiversity Framework Target 15.
TNFD-aligned indicators. The TNFD recommends disclosure of dependencies and impacts on nature across four realms (land, ocean, freshwater, atmosphere). For ocean contexts, Ocean Accounts provide direct measurement of the core TNFD metrics:
IFRS S1/S2-aligned indicators. IFRS S1 requires disclosure of sustainability-related risks and opportunities that could reasonably be expected to affect an entity’s cash flows, access to finance, or cost of capital. IFRS S2 addresses climate-related disclosures specifically. Ocean Accounts support these disclosures by providing:
CBD Target 15 indicators. CBD Target 15 requires that large and transnational businesses and financial institutions regularly monitor, assess, and transparently disclose their risks, dependencies, and impacts on biodiversity. Ocean Accounts provide the measurement infrastructure for Target 15 compliance by enabling businesses to:
Template for integrated impact reporting. Practitioners preparing impact reports for ocean-related investments can use the following template structure, with each metric sourced directly from Ocean Account tables:
For the underlying extent and condition accounts, see TG-3.1 Asset Accounts and TG-2.1. Development finance applications of the same templates are in TG-1.7; project-level instruments in TG-1.8.
For many firms, the most material ocean-related risks arise not in direct operations but in supply chains. Global supply chains for seafood, agricultural commodities, raw materials, and manufactured goods intersect with ocean ecosystems through production locations, shipping routes, port infrastructure, and water use. Ocean Accounts enable firms to map and quantify supply chain exposure to ocean ecosystem risk.
Mapping supply chain exposure: The first step in supply chain ocean risk assessment is identifying which supply chain nodes interact with ocean or coastal ecosystems. For seafood and aquaculture supply chains, direct identification is straightforward. For other commodity supply chains, the interactions are often indirect (coastal port exposure, river-to-ocean nutrient loading from agricultural inputs, offshore industrial effluent). Ocean Accounts, particularly residual flow accounts and extent accounts, provide the spatial context needed to assess where supply chain node geographies coincide with ecologically significant or deteriorating marine areas.
Quantifying exposure: Once supply chain nodes are mapped to ocean ecosystem contexts, condition and trend data from Ocean Accounts enable quantification of:
Industry-specific applications: The following sectors illustrate how supply chain ocean risk assessment draws on specific Ocean Account components:
Seafood and aquaculture: Fish stock accounts and ecosystem condition indicators compiled within national Ocean Accounts frameworks provide the most direct data source for assessing fishery health. Condition indicators including spawning stock biomass, mean trophic level, and the proportion of stocks fished within sustainable limits are derivable from well-compiled national accounts. Firms can use these indicators to segment their sourcing portfolio by sustainability risk, informing supplier engagement and procurement policy.
Agricultural commodities: Crops grown in coastal watersheds contribute to coastal eutrophication through fertiliser runoff. National residual flow accounts track nutrient loads reaching coastal waters at the catchment level. Firms sourcing from coastal agricultural regions can use these accounts to identify high-risk sourcing areas and engage suppliers on nutrient management practices.
Marine transport and logistics: Port infrastructure faces increasing physical risk from sea level rise, intensified storm events, and coral reef degradation (which affects wave attenuation). Coastal infrastructure accounts and regulating service flow accounts compiled within national Ocean Accounts frameworks document trends in coastal protection service capacity. These trends give logistics operators a basis for assessing port-level physical risk exposure.
Financial services (insurance and lending): Insurers and lenders with portfolios exposed to coastal real estate, fisheries, aquaculture, or marine infrastructure face physical and transition risk from ocean ecosystem change. Ocean Accounts compiled at the national level provide the standardised, time-series ecosystem trend data that enables portfolio-level screening for nature-related risk concentration. Banks and asset managers also face lender liability risk where financing is extended to borrowers whose operations contribute to marine ecosystem degradation. Ocean Account pressure data can inform pre-lending due diligence and ongoing portfolio monitoring for such exposures.
National Ocean Accounts are compiled at the country or large subnational scale and are not designed to report data at the level of an individual firm or site, whilst this does not render them irrelevant to corporate reporting: the spatial disaggregation and attribution methods described in this section allow nationally compiled data to be translated into enterprise-relevant inputs.
A central challenge for private sector users of Ocean Accounts is the scale mismatch: national accounts are compiled at country or large subnational levels, whilst corporate reporting typically requires asset-level or site-level data.
The method for disaggregating national totals to a site or sourcing geography, and for attributing a share of area totals to a single firm, is set out in TG-3.11 Sub-National Ocean Accounts Sections 3.1 to 3.4. Firms should not construct their own downscaling: an overlay performed without the reconciliation TG-3.11 Section 3.2 requires produces site-level figures that do not sum back to the national totals they were derived from, which is precisely what makes a disclosure unverifiable.
Three questions to put to the national statistical office or ocean management agency before relying on disaggregated figures:
For provisioning services with harvest or extraction reporting, a firm’s share of national extraction is a defensible attribution. For regulating and cultural services it is not: those rest on contribution analysis and should be disclosed as approximations, with the basis stated. Where TNFD sector guidance or Science Based Targets Network methods specify an ocean attribution approach, those take precedence.
National Ocean Accounts are compiled on an annual or multi-year basis. Corporate reporting cycles (annual reports, sustainability reports) require current-year data. In countries with regular account compilation cycles, firms can typically access recent-period account data. In countries where accounts are less frequently updated, firms may need to extrapolate from the most recent compilation using supplementary indicator data or to flag the data vintage in their disclosures. Firms should document the data vintage and spatial resolution of Ocean Account data used in disclosures, consistent with IFRS S1 requirements for transparency about data quality and limitations.
Sustainable ocean finance access: As described in TG-1.8 OA and Project-Level Finance, blue bonds, sustainability-linked bonds, and debt-for-nature instruments offer preferential financing terms to borrowers whose activities demonstrate credible, measurable ocean stewardship. Firms that have already conducted Ocean Account-grounded dependency and impact assessments are well-positioned to access these instruments, because the baseline and monitoring data required by instrument covenants is already compiled. The investment indicator framework in TG-2.6 Ocean-related Investment describes how ocean-related investment is tracked at the national level, providing context for benchmarking firm-level capital allocation against national and sectoral trends.
Ecosystem service revenue: In jurisdictions with active payment for ecosystem services (PES) schemes or carbon markets, firms that protect or restore coastal and marine ecosystems can generate revenue from ecosystem service payments. Ocean Accounts underpin the baseline and additionality assessments required by PES and carbon market protocols. Firms operating in the aquaculture, coastal tourism, or offshore energy sectors frequently have the spatial presence and management authority over coastal and marine ecosystems that is required to participate in PES and blue carbon markets, as further described in TG-6.2 Mangrove and Coastal Wetland Accounting.
Biodiversity offsetting: In jurisdictions where regulatory or voluntary frameworks require businesses to offset residual biodiversity impacts, Ocean Account condition and extent data provide the measurement baseline needed to quantify impact and verify the ecological integrity of offset sites. Specifically, national ecosystem condition indicators serve as the reference state against which the additionality of proposed offset activities is assessed. This application is growing as national regulators adopt no-net-loss or net-gain policies for marine development. These policies create demand for standardised, independently verifiable baseline data that national Ocean Accounts are well placed to supply.
Nature-positive supply chain premiums: Consumer markets increasingly reward sustainable sourcing through certification premiums (Marine Stewardship Council, Aquaculture Stewardship Council) and retailer procurement preferences. Ocean Account condition indicators aligned with certification sustainability criteria, particularly fish stock status and ecosystem condition, can provide the third-party verifiable baseline data that certification bodies increasingly require.
Strategic positioning in the nature economy: The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) Target 15 calls on businesses and financial institutions to regularly monitor, assess, and transparently disclose nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities by 2030. The GBF also sets Target 19 to mobilise at least USD 200 billion per year for biodiversity finance by 2030, from all sources (public and private), with private sector mechanisms expected to contribute a growing proportion of this total.
Several application areas are at early-stage development but are likely to become material within the planning horizon of major corporations and financial institutions. Methods and markets are still developing. The degree to which Ocean Accounts will fulfil these roles depends on continued investment in national account compilation and private sector capacity.
Portfolio-level nature risk screening: Asset managers and institutional investors are beginning to develop ocean-specific portfolio screening tools that draw on national ecosystem trend data to identify listed equities and debt securities with material exposure to ocean ecosystem deterioration. Country-level and regional ecosystem condition information drawn from Ocean Accounts could populate these screening tools, supplementing the company-level disclosure data that currently dominates ESG screening, though the integration of national account data into commercial screening platforms remains at an early stage.
Nature-related stress testing: Financial supervisors in several jurisdictions are exploring nature-related scenario analysis and stress testing requirements, analogous to climate-related stress tests. Ocean ecosystems feature prominently in these scenarios, particularly coral reef collapse, fisheries stock depletion, and sea level rise affecting coastal collateral. Ocean Accounts time-series data may inform the physical scenario inputs for ocean-realm stress tests, potentially providing statistically grounded trajectories of ecosystem change, where sufficiently compiled and temporally consistent national series exist.
Supply chain due diligence regulation: The EU Deforestation Regulation and emerging due diligence frameworks in other jurisdictions are creating legal obligations for firms to demonstrate that supply chains do not contribute to ecosystem destruction, including marine ecosystem degradation. Due diligence verification systems could draw on national-level baseline and monitoring data from Ocean Accounts to assess whether sourcing geographies are consistent with sustainable ecosystem management, though the specific regulatory uptake of national account data for this purpose is not yet established in most jurisdictions. For the EIA-linked aspects of due diligence, see also TG-1.6 OA and Environmental Impact Assessment.
Nature credits and biodiversity offsets: Voluntary biodiversity credit markets are emerging alongside established carbon markets. These markets create a potential new asset class linked to marine biodiversity outcomes. Biodiversity credit protocols may rely on Ocean Accounts condition and extent data as the measurement infrastructure needed to verify additionality, permanence, and ecological integrity of ocean-based credits. Standardisation of measurement methodologies, currently a major barrier to voluntary biodiversity credit market development, is expected to converge on SEEA EA-aligned approaches over the medium term, though this convergence is not yet assured.
Corporate natural capital accounting: A small but growing number of corporations are beginning to integrate natural capital accounting into internal decision-making, valuing their dependencies on ecosystem services as part of capital budgeting and project appraisal. Ocean Accounts may provide the unit value reference data (ecosystem service values per hectare by ecosystem type) that corporate natural capital accounts require. Firms could then populate internal accounts without commissioning bespoke ecosystem service valuations for each decision, subject to the availability and spatial coverage of national monetary accounts.
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Ocean Accounts and Private Sector Decision-Making (2026) (GOAP Technical Guidance on Ocean Accounting, TG-1.11, v0.8.1). GOAP Secretariat. https://guidance.oceanaccounts.org/circulars/section-1/1-11-private-sector/
guidance.oceanaccounts.org/circulars/section-1/1-11-private-sector
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