Modifying national accounts for sustainable ocean development

Sustainable development of the ocean economy requires a system for measuring progress. The standard system of national accounting provides a solid foundation for doing so, though the scope requires expansion to adequately cover household-produced services; for example, ocean-based leisure, and the role of natural capital in the ocean economy. The accounts summary needs indicators beyond gross domestic product that enable users to choose what is included. New technologies make digital dashboards of indicators easy to produce. Such dashboards facilitate rapid comparison of indicators that cannot be aggregated into a single metric, which enables national ocean accounts to coherently present physical and monetary data. The authors propose that a dashboard of indicators should be used to monitor progress toward a sustainable ocean economy.