Practical guidance for the people who have to produce the numbers.
Whether you are compiling your first account, briefing a minister, or checking one method against the standards — 85 modular circulars, each self-contained, open for comment.
What are you trying to do?
The Technical Guidance is written to be used, not read cover to cover. Every circular is self-contained and states its own prerequisites, so the fastest route in is the task in front of you.
| If you need to… | Go to |
|---|---|
| Understand what an ocean account actually is, before committing to anything | Circular 0.1: General Introduction |
| Work out where your country or agency should begin | Circular 0.8: Implementation Readiness |
| Compile a specific account — assets, flows, ecosystem services, social or economic | Section 3: Compiling accounts |
| Produce an indicator a ministry, treaty body, or MEA has asked for | Section 2: Indicators |
| Get accounts into a budget submission, plan, or spatial management process | Section 1: Decision-making |
| Find out what data you need and where it comes from | Section 4: Data production |
| See how another country did it before you commit to an approach | Section 5: Case studies |
| Follow a reading pathway matched to your role | Circular 0.5: Navigating the Technical Guidance |
| Search or filter the whole set yourself | Find the right circular |
If you would rather browse
General Introduction to Ocean Accounts
What ocean accounts are and how they work, in terms that make sense to economists, ecologists, and policymakers alike. No prerequisites.
Navigating the Technical Guidance
Ten role-based reading pathways — national statistician, policy executive, blue finance practitioner, and more — each with a core sequence of circulars.
Find the right circular
Filter the full set by theme, audience, and workflow stage, or search the text directly, if you already know what you are looking for.
The questions GDP cannot answer
Traditional economic indicators cannot answer the questions ocean managers actually face. GDP does not capture environmental depletion, it does not show who gains and who loses, and it says nothing about whether the asset base is being maintained. Ocean accounts organise environmental, economic, and social data about marine and coastal systems into one structured picture, so that governments can see the trade-offs behind ocean policy.
The guidance is built around the three information requirements this leaves open:
- What is the current economic output from ocean-related activities? The scale and composition of the ocean economy.
- What benefits and disbenefits do people derive from the ocean, and how are they distributed? Who gains, who loses, and whether ocean development is equitable.
- Is ocean development sustainable over time? Whether natural, produced, human, and social capital is being maintained or depleted.
Every method is anchored to adopted international standards — the 2025 System of National Accounts, the SEEA Central Framework, and SEEA Ecosystem Accounting — and interprets them for the ocean context. Circulars carry a stability badge (Core, Applied, Emerging, or Pilot) so you can see how settled the method you are relying on actually is before you build a national statistic on it.
Seven sections, eighty-five circulars
| Section | Focus | Circulars |
|---|---|---|
| Section 0 | Concepts and front matter — the framework, standards, glossary, and reading pathways | 8 |
| Section 1 | Decision-making — how accounts enter budgets, planning, spatial management, and EIA | 11 |
| Section 2 | Indicators — from accounts to the measures policymakers and MEAs ask for | 13 |
| Section 3 | Compiling accounts — assets, flows, ecosystem services, social and economic accounts | 15 |
| Section 4 | Data production — sources, statistical infrastructure, and quality | 12 |
| Section 5 | Case studies — national and subnational implementation experience | 11 |
| Section 6 | Thematic methods — sector- and topic-specific approaches | 15 |
Tell us where it fails you
This site is the open consultation edition, and the most useful comment is a practical one: a step you could not follow, a data source you do not have, a method that will not survive your national context. Most circulars are Draft — substantially written, published for reading, and still under review by the GOAP Technical Expert Panel. Planned circulars have defined scope but no content yet.
To comment, select any passage in a circular. A prompt appears; it opens a short form that records the passage you selected along with your comment. You do not need a GitHub account, and you do not need to comment on a whole circular — paragraph-level comments on a specific method are the most useful kind.
Your comment may be published in the consultation record. Your name, email, and organisation will not be. Full detail: How to comment.
Support behind the guidance
You do not have to implement this alone. GOAP aims to develop globally recognised, standardised guidance for ocean accounting, and to support at least 30 countries by 2030 in building complete sequences of national ocean accounts. Members gain access to GOAP Fellows and international experts in ocean accounting methodology, a library of technical guidance and case studies, and regional Communities of Practice.
The GOAP Secretariat is hosted by the University of New South Wales (UNSW). Partnership activities are funded by the United Kingdom Blue Planet Fund, the World Bank Blue Economy Program, Australia’s Oceans Leadership Package, and the Australia–India Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative Partnership.
For more about the Partnership, visit oceanaccounts.org. For enquiries, contact info@oceanaccounts.org. Contributors to this guidance are credited in Circular 0.3: Acknowledgements.