An implementation roadmap for Australia's Ocean Accounts

How Australia can move to integrated, evidence-based ocean governance using Ocean Accounts and what it will take to get there.

Summary of An implementation roadmap for Australia’s Ocean Accounts. Australian Journal of Maritime & Ocean Affairs.

Australia has the marine science capabilities, the policy frameworks, and now the international commitment to implement national Ocean Accounts. What it has lacked is a coordinated pathway to bring these together. This paper provides a phased roadmap developed through Australia’s National Marine Science Committee process to inform the 2026–2035 National Marine Science Strategy.

At the 2025 UN Ocean Conference, Australia joined 18 nations in pledging to advance Ocean Accounts by 2030. This paper maps a path to deliver on that commitment. The paper identifies the marine science priorities for national implementation, addresses the critical gap in social, cultural and equity data, and sets out the institutional conditions needed to make ocean accounting a permanent national capability rather than a series of one-off pilots.

Success rests on three factors: coordination, clear institutional responsibility and sustained investment to turn existing information into accounts that decision-makers can use.

Australia’s starting point

Australia starts from a position of strength. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has published experimental national ecosystem accounts since 2022, with further releases in 2025 and 2026. The Australian Institute of Marine Science, CSIRO and leading universities deliver world-class marine science. In addition, recent policy, from the Nature Repair Market Act to the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan and the draft Sustainable Oceans Plan, is already creating demand for exactly the integrated environmental-economic information Ocean Accounts provide.

Australia is also home to global thought leadership in this field. The Global Ocean Accounts Partnership (GOAP), whose Secretariat is hosted at the University of New South Wales, is the leading international body advancing ocean accounting. GOAP developed the conceptual framework and technical guidance that underpin this roadmap, has supported countries around the world to design and compile accounts, and continues to set the methodological standards on which national implementation depends. Its most significant recent contribution is the development of Social Accounts, extending ocean accounting beyond the environmental and economic to capture the social, cultural and equity dimensions of ocean use.

Demand is also coming from the private sector. Businesses increasingly must assess and disclose nature-related financial risks, including ocean dependencies, under frameworks such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD).

Significant gaps nonetheless remain. Marine data sits in dozens of institutions, collected to different methods, classifications and standards. Social, cultural and equity data, the information that reveals who gains and who loses from ocean use, is the least developed of all. In addition, ocean accounting has no clear home in Australian governance, despite the country’s prominent role in international efforts.

Critically, the principal barrier is not a shortage of data or scientific capability. It is the absence of coordination, clear institutional responsibility and sustained investment to draw existing information together into accounts that decision-makers can use.

A phased roadmap for national implementation

The roadmap sets out three phases over a decade, balancing ambition with what is achievable now. Running through all three are the themes that define GOAP’s approach: (i) integrating environmental, economic and social information in one framework, (ii) building Social Accounts to capture the social, cultural and equity dimensions of ocean use and (iii) connecting Australia’s effort to the international standards that GOAP coordinates.

1–3 years: Build the data foundations, stand up a cross-jurisdictional coordination group, and produce experimental national Ocean Accounts from information already in hand. This phase also begins the work that takes the longest time to get right. That means scoping Social Accounts alongside the environmental and economic components, and — where communities choose to take part — initiating Indigenous-led engagement on whether and how traditional knowledge is reflected.

3–5 years: Standardise methods and classifications across jurisdictions, and embed Ocean Accounts in existing reporting, including State of the Environment reporting and the Sustainable Ocean Plan. Develop Australia’s Social Accounts, drawing directly on GOAP’s pilots in Belize, Costa Rica, the Maldives and Mozambique, which already provide proven, modular templates for capturing community wellbeing, livelihoods, cultural connections and the distribution of benefits and costs. Knowledge will also be drawn from the updated GOAP Technical Guidance and knowledge from the Social Accounts Working Group.

5–10 years: Comprehensive accounts, integrating environmental, economic and social information, produced routinely as a core institutional function, with Australia helping shape international standards through GOAP and sharing expertise across the Indo-Pacific.

Across every phase, the inclusion of Indigenous, traditional and local knowledge is a matter for Indigenous and traditional knowledge holders alone. It is for them to decide whether, how, and on what terms their knowledge enters any accounting structure. Engagement must be Indigenous-led, follow cultural protocols, and uphold data sovereignty. The paper deliberately frames this as “weaving” rather than “integrating” knowledge systems, treating Indigenous knowledge as equal in standing to scientific knowledge rather than a data source to be absorbed. This is not optional or deferred, it is a precondition for ocean accounting in Australia to be credible and legitimate.

Critical enabling conditions

Three things will decide whether ocean accounting becomes a lasting national capability or remains a scatter of pilots:

• Coordination, not more committees. One body with a clear mandate to align jurisdictions, assign data stewardship and lead, while keeping rightsholders, agencies, industry and communities at the table.

• Funding that outlasts the project cycle. Ongoing budget lines and cost-sharing across the agencies that use the accounts, not one-off grants that leave each release in doubt.

• Value decision-makers can see. Start modular, deliver early wins on priority accounts, and prove the accounts change decisions, or they remain a technical exercise.

Australia has the science, the standing and the international platform. With these conditions in place, it can turn a decade of ambition into accounts that shape how the ocean is governed, at home and as a model for others.

The full paper sets out the detailed roadmap, marine science priorities and implementation actions.

Key sources

Trebilco, R., Shellock, R., Loureiro, T.G., Pascoe, S., Doblin, M., Cannard, T., Koenig, K., Scheufele, G., Khoo, J., Barclay, K., Ferrari, R., Murunga, M., Layton, C., Milligan, B. and James, P. (2026). An implementation roadmap for Australia’s Ocean Accounts. Australian Journal of Maritime & Ocean Affairs. https://doi.org/10.1080/18366503.2026.2687145

Shellock, R.J., Thoms, R.E., James, P.A.S., Loureiro, T.G. et al. (2025). Social Accounts for the Ocean: A Path to Inclusive and Equitable Ocean Decision-Making. Environmental Science & Policy 173:104221. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2025.104221

Global Ocean Accounts Partnership. (2025). Technical Guidance on Ocean Accounting for Sustainable Ocean Development (v32). https://oceanaccounts.org/files/Technical-Guidance-on-Ocean-Accounting-for-Sustainable-Development-v32.pdf