By analysing statistics on the economy and the environment at the same time it is possible to show different patterns of sustainability for production and consumption.
In broad terms, the area can be described as enabling any user of statistics to compare environmental issues to general economics, knowing that the comparisons are based on the same entities, for example, pollution levels caused by a producing industry can be linked to the specific economics of that industry.
For example, the inventories produced for the reporting of air emissions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are based on the geographic borders of a country while the air emission accounts following SEEA use the boundary of a specific economy (this is the "residence principle" of the national accounts).
[3] The United Nations Statistical Commission adopted the SEEA EA standard at its 52nd session in March 2021.
[4] Following its adoption, the Statistics Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) released the ARIES for SEEA Explorer[5] in April 2021, an artificial intelligence-powered tool based on the Artificial Intelligence for Environment and Sustainability (ARIES) platform for rapid, standardized and customizable natural capital accounting.
[9] According to Joy E. Hecht, PhD, the 1993 handbook did not receive the approval of the United Nations Statistical Commission "...because it did not represent a consensus report but was offered to UN members as a basis for discussion and experimental implementation".
In March 2005 the United Nations Statistical Commission established the UN Committee of Experts on Environmental-Economic Accounting (UNCEEA).
Eurostat, and the European Statistical Offices used this as a basis for the development and implementation of the different topics and modules described in the SEEA 1993.
In more recent years, in June 2006, the European Council adopted "an ambitious and comprehensive renewed EU Strategy for Sustainable Development".
It was then stated that: "For better understanding of interlinkages between the three dimensions of SD [Sustainable Development], the core system of national income accounting could be extended by inter alia integrating stock and flow concepts and non-market work and be further elaborated by satellite accounts, e.g., environmental expenditures, material flows and taking into consideration international best practices.
[16] The high level conference "Beyond GDP" in November 2007 at which Commissioner Dimas concluded that "we [The European Commission] will also need to speed up and improve the development of integrated accounting in the social and environmental spheres" increased the interest for SEEA.
According to this communication, the European Commission plans to extend the existing data collection further, ready for policy analysis by 2013.