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Energy Accounts | Fish Accounts | Forestry Accounts | Mineral Accounts | Water Accounts
Defining natural resources
New Zealanders are becoming increasingly aware of the complex relationships between society, the economy and the environment. Historically, New Zealand has utilised its abundant natural resources for economic development. In recent years, however, the apparent depletion of some natural resources has shifted New Zealand’s focus towards sustainable development. To move down the sustainable development path requires readily available information about the linkages between the economy, the environment, and society.
Information about the level of natural resource use and existing stocks of natural resources can be obtained from natural resource accounts. ‘Natural resources’ refer to renewable and non-renewable naturally occurring biological assets that have the potential to be used for economic production or consumption.
Standard measures of economic performance such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) do not fully account for unsustainable use of natural resources. Natural resource accounts complement measures, such as GDP, to provide a more complete picture of a country’s economic and environmental performance.
The decision to produce national environmental accounts
The decision to produce national environmental accounts was announced in the 2000 Budget. New Zealand is the only Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nation that has not compiled a set of environmental accounts. Producing these accounts will, among other things, help New Zealand meet its commitments under various ratified international conventions.
This overview document provides a background for natural resource accounts, and the New Zealand natural resource accounts in particular. It is designed to complement any report or tables released for specific New Zealand natural resource accounts. There are a wide variety of natural resource accounts that can be produced, including forestry, fisheries, sub-soil/energy assets, water, land and ecosystems. The presentation of natural resource accounts will vary for different resources, but they all share a common conceptual basis.
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