Natural Capital(NCAVES):

• Natural Capital Accounting and Valuation of the Ecosystem Services (NCAVES) India Forum2021 The NCAVES Project, funded by EU, has been jointly implemented by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Secretariat of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD). India is one of the five countries taking part in this project – the other countries being Brazil, China, South Africa and Mexico. 
• The project funded by the European Union through its Partnership Instrument (PI), aims to:
  • Improving the measurement of ecosystems and their services (both in physical and monetary terms) at the (sub)national level;
  • Mainstreaming biodiversity and ecosystems at (sub)national level policy planning and implementation;
  • Contribute to the development of internationally agreed methodology and its use in partner countries.
• In India, the NCAVES project is being implemented by the MoSPI in close collaboration with the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) and the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC). MoSPI has coordinated with all the stakeholders through a consultative process by setting in place a mechanism for linking the diverse stakeholders concerned – namely producers and the policymakers using the environmental accounts.
• The participation in the project has helped MOSPI commence the compilation of the Environment Accounts as per the UN-SEEA framework and release environmental accounts in its publication “EnviStats India” on an annual basis since 2018. Several of these accounts are closely related to the social and economic attributes, making them a useful tool for the Policy.
• MORE: Natural Capital Accounting (NCA): It is an umbrella term covering efforts to make use of an accounting framework to provide a systematic way to measure and report on stocks and flows of natural capital. Natural capital is another term for the stock of renewable and non-renewable resources that combine to yield a flow of benefits to people. NCA covers accounting for individual environmental assets or resources, both biotic and abiotic (such as water, minerals, energy, timber, fish), as well as accounting for ecosystem assets (e.g. forests; wetlands), biodiversity and ecosystem services, in both physical and monetary terms.