Asset Accounts

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Asset Accounts
SEEAW training course New York, 13-17 November
2006
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Outline

• What do Asset accounts measure?
• Basic definitions
• Asset classification
• SEEAW standard tables
• Supplementary tables/information
• Breakdown of water flows
• Matrix of flows within the environment

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What do Asset Accounts measure?

• Asset Accounts describe in physical units
• The stocks of water resources
• The changes in stocks that occur during the
  accounting period (natural and anthropogenic
  changes)
• They link information on abstraction and returns
  with information on the stocks of water resources

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Hydrological cycle and water balance
Precipitation Evapotranspiration runoff /-
changes in storage
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Basic structure
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1993 SNA Asset classification

• Aquifers and other groundwater resources to the
  extent that their scarcity leads to the
  enforcement of ownership and/or use of rights,
  market valuation and some measure of economic
  control.
• Thus only a small portion of the water resources
  in a country is included in the 1993 SNA.

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SEEAW

• Water resources include water found in fresh and
  brackish surface and groundwater bodies within
  the national territory that provide direct use
  benefits now or in the future (option benefits)
  through the provision of raw material and may be
  subject to quantitative depletion through human
  use.

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SEEAW asset classification

• EA.13 Water Resources (measured in cubic metres)
• EA.131 Surface water
• EA.1311 Artificial Reservoirs
• EA.1312 Lakes
• EA.1313 Rivers and streams
• EA 1314 Glaciers, Snow and Ice
• EA 132 Groundwater
• EA.133 Soil Water

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Asset accounts
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Water resources

• Surface water water which flows over, or is
  stored on the ground surface. It includes
  artificial reservoirs, lakes, rivers and streams,
  glaciers, snow and ice.
• Groundwater water which collects in porous
  layers of underground formations known as
  aquifers
• Soil water water suspended in the uppermost belt
  of soil, or in the zone of aeration near the
  ground surface, that can be discharged in to the
  atmosphere by evapotranspiration

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Water in oceans, seas and atmosphere

• ..not recorded in terms of stocks but only in
  terms of flows.
• For example, abstraction from the seas,
  collection of precipitation, outflows to the
  seas, evaporation/evapotranspiration etc.

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Fresh and non-fresh water

• Water resources include fresh and brackish water.
• Brackish water can be used with or without
  treatment for some industrial uses or for
  irrigation purposes for some specific crops
• Water resources can be further disaggregated into
  fresh and brackish water

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Stocks for rivers

• It is not easy to define.
• The stock of a river should be measured as the
  volume of the active riverbed determined on the
  basis of the geographic profile of the riverbed
  and the water level.
• This quantity is usually very small compared to
  the total stocks of water resources and the
  annual flows of rivers.
• It can be avoided computing the stocks of rivers

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Matrix of transfers within the environment
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Accounts for transboundary waters