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Staff and students from the Department of Economics and Economic History at Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 were pleased to welcome Thembalihle Ndlovu and Brenda Tema, members of the Environmental-Economic Accounts (EEA) department of Stats SA, to present at Rhodes this week.
As defined by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), “EEA brings together economic and environmental information in a common framework to measure the contribution of the environment to the economy and the impact of the economy on the environment.”
The System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounts (SEEA) uses concepts, definitions and classifications common to the 1993 System of National Accounts, and can be used to identify more sustainable paths of development.
EEAs provide an accounting framework that allows for the integration of extremely specialised data from the physical resources sector with other economic information available. To this date Stats SA has produced or is working on EEAs on Water, Minerals, Energy, Forestry and Fisheries.
Tema, who spoke to the Honours students earlier in the day, specialises in Energy Accounts, and Ndlovu in Mineral Accounts.
Ndlovu opened her presentation by reminding the audience how very important mineral accounts are for South Africa. Mining supports and stimulates growth and development in our country and as the mainstay of South Africa's economy for over a hundred years, in 2008 mining contributed 9.2% to the GDP.
Ndlovu discussed the various accounts used to calculate statistics accurately for the purposes of EEA, presenting charts to illustrate how resource rents (the money the government is owed from mining concerns as minerals are a public resource) are not necessarily being collected and used in the recommended manner.
Sustainable management requires resource rents to be reinvested in other activities which will generate income after mineral wealth is exhausted. The EI Serafy rule is used to indicate what percentage of rent should be reinvested. While Stats SA does not draw up policies, their analysis of data can, through EEAs, be used to influence policy making. For example, resource rent data may indicate if mining has not been economically viable in a given financial period.
One of the questions asked after the presentation was to what extent the EI Serafy rule takes negative environmental impacts into account. Ndlovu replied that the rule does not in fact cover these impacts; this is a challenge that her department faces in producing accounts.
Ending on a positive note, Tema explained that South Africa is part of the Oslo Group on Energy Statistics and the London Group on Environmental Accounting, and South Africa is regarded as the top African nation when it comes to producing environmental data.