Natural Capital Accounting and Valuation of the Ecosystem Services (NCAVES) India Forum-2021

Description

Context: NCAVES India Forum 2021 is being organised by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI).

NCAVES Project

The NCAVES Project, funded by EU, has been jointly implemented by the
- United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD),
- the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and
- the Secretariat of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD).
India is one of the five countries taking part in this project - the other countries being Brazil, China, South Africa and Mexico.
In India, the NCAVES project is being implemented by the MoSPI in close collaboration with the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) and the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC).
MoSPI has coordinated with all the stakeholders through a consultative process by setting in place a mechanism for linking the diverse stakeholders concerned – namely producers and the policymakers using the environmental accounts.
The participation in the project has helped MOSPI commence the compilation of the Environment Accounts as per the UN-SEEA framework and release environmental accounts in its publication “EnviStats India” on an annual basis since 2018.
Several of these accounts are closely related to the social and economic attributes, making them a useful tool for the Policy.
Under the NCAVES project, the India-EVL Tool is developed, which is essentially a look-up tool giving a snapshot of the values of various ecosystem services in the different States of the country, based on about 80 studies conducted across the country.
An additional benefit of this tool is that it provides a critical view on the literature that is available and the applicability of estimates spatially across India according to bio-geographical areas.