Ocean accounts as an approach to foster, monitor, and report progress towards sustainable development in a changing ocean – The Systems and Flows Model

Accounting systems that go beyond economic metrics alone and integrate societal, economic and environmental information to measure and manage progress towards ocean sustainable development are essential. This integration is best achieved by incorporating these three domains into a consistent and standard ocean accounting (OA) framework based on established and novel accounting standards. This publication describes the novel OA framework and its components; highlights its use opportunities, benefits, and challenges; and presents the Systems and Flows Model (SaFM) for OA. The SaFM represents the OA framework as a system of systems, evidencing the various accounting standards it integrates and the flows between them.