Global Ocean Accounts Partnership Secretariat · GOAP Technical Guidance on Ocean Accounting · circular
Monetary valuation is one of the most powerful and most often misused outputs of ocean accounting. Applied appropriately, monetary values allow ecosystem services and assets to be compared with standard economic measures, inform policy trade-offs, and contribute to extended measures of national wealth. Applied inappropriately, they undermine the credibility of the accounts and support conclusions the evidence does not carry.
This Circular is about whether and when to value, and how to present the result. It does not specify valuation methods: the preference order, the methods at each level, the methods inadmissible in accounts and the worked application are set out in TG-2.4 Environmental (including Ecosystem) Goods and Services Section 3.10, with asset-level net present value in TG-3.1 Asset Accounts Sections 3.3 and 3.5.3.
After reading it, a decision-maker or compiler should be able to answer four questions. Should this question be answered with a monetary figure at all, or do physical accounts already settle it (Sections 3.1 and 3.2)? What kind of value is this figure — an exchange value from the accounts, or a welfare value from a cost-benefit study — and can the two be placed in the same total (Section 3.3)? How much weight will it bear, given the preference level of the method behind it and whether inadmissible methods have been folded in (Section 3.4)? And how must it be presented so that it is not read as the total value of the ecosystem, as a licence to trade the ecosystem away, or as more precise than it is (Section 3.5)?
Monetary values from accounts will not fully reflect the importance of ecosystems for people and the economy. Physical accounts should always be compiled and released alongside them.
Related Circulars:
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.
Monetary valuation of ocean ecosystem services and assets is appropriate and valuable in specific decision contexts where monetary comparison provides necessary information.
Exchange-value-based monetary accounts support the applications summarised in Table 3.1.1 below.
Table 3.1.1: Applications supported by exchange-value-based monetary accounts
The net present value approach to ecosystem asset valuation, using the discounted present value of expected future ecosystem service flows, provides a basis for:
The selection of an appropriate discount rate determines the resulting asset value. The SEEA EA provides a dual framing for discount rate selection: individual market-based discount rates should be applied for ecosystem services whose users are private economic units, whilst social discount rates should be applied for ecosystem services that contribute to collective benefits received by groups of people or society generally (SEEA EA, para. 10.77). For ocean accounting, where many services such as coastal protection and carbon sequestration provide collective benefits, social discount rates may be more appropriate for a large share of the service portfolio. Para 10.78 further notes that social discount rates should be based on rates in active use in government decision-making, or long-term government bond rates where such rates are not available.
In practice, different discount rates can produce widely divergent asset values for long-lived marine ecosystems, particularly for services such as carbon sequestration and coastal protection where benefits accrue over decades or centuries. Compilers should conduct sensitivity analysis to assess the effect of alternative discount rates on asset values and document the chosen rate and its rationale transparently. The SEEA EA does not prescribe a single rate but encourages consistency within and across accounts.
Where a country has no published social discount rate and no active long-term government bond market, a situation common among small island developing states (SIDS) and many coastal developing countries, compilers should apply the following fallback approach: (a) use a regional average social discount rate from the relevant regional development bank (e.g., the Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, or African Development Bank) as the first option; (b) if no regional rate is available, apply 3% as a conservative international benchmark consistent with IPCC AR6 Working Group III Chapter 3 and the commonly applied lower-bound social rate in climate economics literature, with explicit justification; (c) in all cases, conduct sensitivity analysis spanning at least three rates across a plausible range (e.g., 2%, 4%, 7%) and report results for each. See TG-3.1 for further treatment in the context of asset accounts.
Monetary values from ocean accounts can provide baseline data to support:
For ocean accounting specifically, monetary valuation is particularly valuable for:
Monetary valuation should not be pursued, or should be approached with caution, in the circumstances set out below.
For many policy questions, physical accounts on ecosystem extent, condition, and service flows provide sufficient information without requiring monetary valuation. Physical accounts may be preferred when:
Recommendation: Always compile and publish physical accounts. Consider monetary valuation as a complement, not a replacement, for physical measurement.
Monetary valuation should be approached cautiously when:
In such cases, it may be preferable to:
Special care is needed to avoid situations where monetary values may be misinterpreted. Monetary values from accounts:
Clear communication (see Section 3.5) is essential to manage these risks. Compilers should make explicit the limitations of monetary values and the complementary information required for sound decision-making.
Caution is required when aggregating monetary values across:
Decision rule — nursery services and resource rent: When the resource rent method is used to value fish provisioning services, nursery habitat services (e.g., coral reef or mangrove nursery function) must not be separately valued in the same account. The resource rent is a residual that already captures the combined contribution of all ecosystem inputs to the fishery, including nursery function. Valuing nursery services separately alongside resource rent would double-count that contribution. Separate valuation of nursery services is appropriate only when an alternative method (such as the productivity change method) is used and is explicitly specified to exclude the nursery contribution from the production function. This rule applies at the level of a single accounting area; compilers should cross-check it when populating service rows in monetary supply and use tables. See also TG-2.4 Section 3.10.6.
Two properties of accounting values govern every use in Sections 3.1 and 3.2, and a decision-maker who does not hold them will misread the figures.
The accounts record exchange values, not welfare values. An exchange value is what a good, service or asset is or could be exchanged for in cash. A welfare value adds consumer surplus — the difference between what people would have been willing to pay and what they actually paid. Cost-benefit analysis conventionally uses welfare values; the accounts do not, because consumer surplus is not transferred between parties and cannot be reconciled with GDP or national wealth. The practical consequence is that account values are systematically lower than the welfare values a cost-benefit analysis would use for the same service, and the two must never be mixed in one total or one comparison without an explicit bridge.
The valuation guidance is recommendation, not adopted standard. The UN Statistical Commission adopted SEEA EA chapters 1—7, the physical accounting framework, as an international statistical standard in March 2021. It recognised chapters 8—11, which cover valuation, as “internationally recognized statistical principles and recommendations” for countries choosing to undertake valuation. The distinction was deliberate: valuation methods had not reached the methodological maturity of the physical framework. Countries are therefore encouraged but not required to value, and monetary figures should be presented on that footing.
Both points, together with the SNA production boundary that determines which services can be valued at all, are set out in full in TG-2.4 Environmental (including Ecosystem) Goods and Services Section 3.10.1.
Method selection is a compilation decision, specified in TG-2.4 Section 3.10 and, for asset-level valuation, TG-3.1 Asset Accounts Sections 3.3 and 3.5.3. What a decision-maker needs is the shape of the preference order, because it determines how much weight a figure will bear.
The SEEA EA ranks methods by their proximity to observed market transactions:
Three questions follow for anyone commissioning or citing a monetary figure.
At what level was each service valued? A total that aggregates a level 1 carbon price with a level 5 modelled coastal protection estimate carries the uncertainty of its weakest component, not its strongest. Ask for the level by service, not for the total alone.
Is a cost-based figure backed by an actual expenditure? The distinction between level 4 and level 5 turns on whether the defensive or replacement expenditure has been made and recorded. A seawall that has been built and paid for is evidence; a seawall that would notionally be needed is a model. Both are legitimate, but only one survives audit.
Were any inadmissible methods used? Consumer surplus measures, directly applied stated preference results, non-use values and whole-ecosystem restoration costs do not yield exchange values and are not admissible as account entries. They remain valuable for wider policy analysis and can be presented in complementary accounts and bridge tables — but a figure described as coming “from the ocean accounts” should not contain them.
When presenting monetary values from ocean accounts, compilers should communicate the key messages summarised in Table 3.5.1 below.
Table 3.5.1: Key messages to communicate alongside monetary values
Transparent documentation should include the elements summarised in Table 3.5.2 below.
Table 3.5.2: Elements of transparent valuation documentation
Do:
Do not:
Authors: [To be confirmed]
Reviewers: [To be confirmed]
Cite this report
Safe Usage of Monetary Valuation (2026) (GOAP Technical Guidance on Ocean Accounting, TG-1.9, v0.8.1). GOAP Secretariat. https://guidance.oceanaccounts.org/circulars/section-1/1-9-valuation/
guidance.oceanaccounts.org/circulars/section-1/1-9-valuation
© 2026 Global Ocean Accounts Partnership Secretariat · CC BY-NC 4.0 · The report, its PDF and this deck are built from the same source.
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