This publication presents guidance for the compilation of estimates on natural resources to support the implementation of the 2025 System of National Accounts (SNA), the statistical standard for measuring macro-economic activity. It is the result of the work of the OECD informal Expert Group on Natural Capital (EGNC) over the period mid 2023-2025.
The 2025 SNA includes several key changes with regard to the measurement of natural resources compared with the 2008 SNA. First of all, it recommends the treatment of the depletion of natural resources as a cost of production, which changes net aggregates such as net domestic product, net national income and net savings. This change is important to provide better signals to policy makers whether current levels of economic growth are sustainable. Second, it recommends the splitting of natural resource assets between legal owner (in most cases the government) and the extractor (producer) based on their shares of economic ownership. In a technical sense, this ensures alignment between income flows and the assets used to generate this income. It also provides useful insights into how much of the income generated by the exploitation of natural resources is appropriated by the legal owner. Third, there are important changes to the SNA asset classification, treating natural resources as its own category, on par with the other two categories of non-financial assets, namely produced and non-produced non-financial assets (both excluding natural resources). This change to the asset classification not only better signals the importance of natural resources for economic activity, it also aligns the asset classification with capital theory and wealth accounting. A specific change to the classification is an explicit recognition of renewable energy resources such as wind, solar and hydro as economic assets. Finally, the 2025 SNA also introduces several changes to the treatment of biological resources that yield once-only products such as timber and fish resources. Together, these changes regarding natural resources are important to improve the analytical usefulness and policy relevance of the national accounts in areas such as climate change and sustainable development.
The compilation guide aims to assist countries in implementing these recommendations and is primarily intended for national accounts compilers around the world. As countries differ in their data availability and resources, a Tiered approach is followed, including a description of basic and advanced approaches in addition to the standard methods. It is accompanied by four workbooks with mock-up examples for different types of natural resources for educational purposes and to facilitate compilation. The guide also contains useful information for users of national accounts, allowing them to better understand the recording of natural resources in macroeconomic statistics and obtain insights in how their values are derived.
Chapter 1 Introduction provides an overview of the guide, including a description of its scope and the research process underpinning the guide, as well as a description of its structure.
Chapter 2 Measuring natural resources provides further context for the work, discussing differences between accounting approaches and welfare economics, and clarifying the relationship between the SEEA as statistical standard for describing the interrelationship between economy and environment and the SNA. It discusses in detail the key 2025 SNA recommendations pertaining to natural resources and the 2025 SNA asset classification for natural resources.
Chapter 3 Valuation of natural resources discusses valuation methods. It confirms that the preferred valuation method for natural resources is using market prices or market-equivalent prices. Only when these are not available, which is, however, often the case, it is recommended to apply the Net Present Value (NPV) method of future economic benefits (measured by resource rents). The chapter clarifies the difference between resource rent, which measures the surplus value accruing to the extractor (producer) of a natural resource, and rent payments by the extractor to the legal owner. The difference between these two can be used to split the economic ownership between the legal owner and extractor. The chapter discusses specific conditions for splitting assets and provides a practical threshold for implementation.
The chapter also provides detailed recommendations about the measurement of resource rent, which is usually undertaken based on the so-called residual value method (RVM) and introduces a distinction between top-down and bottom-up approaches in its application. It also includes detailed recommendations on various elements required when applying the RVM such as the measurement of the user costs of capital, projecting future resource rent, and the treatment of specific taxes and subsidies. The guide also contains an extensive discussion on discounting and recommends a common stable real discount rate of 2%. There is also a section dedicated to the measurement of depletion, which, consistent with the SEEA, is anchored in changes in physical stocks of natural resources. Finally, a check list is provided to assess whether negative resource rents are “genuine” negatives.
Chapters 4 Mineral and energy resources and 5 Biological resources are topical chapters that zoom into compilation of various types of resources, namely non-renewable mineral and energy resources, and renewable energy resources (Chapter 4), and timber resources and forest land, and aquatic resources (Chapter 5). These chapters follow the same approach and structure. First, the scope and definition of the assets included in the national accounts is provided, as well as relevant classifications. Second, four compilation stages are presented and explained: identifying the types of assets to be included; collecting the physical data; building the monetary asset accounts; and integration of the results into the sequence of economic accounts. These stages are illustrated with mock-up examples detailed in the workbooks. Third, specific compilation issues are discussed for each of these resources; and finally, modifications to the standard approach describing basic and advanced alternative methods.
Chapter 6 Volume measures, time series, quarterly estimates and recording natural resources covers specific compilation issues regarding the measurement of natural resources, such as obtaining volume measures, compiling time series (e.g. backcasting), deriving quarterly estimates of natural resource value and further details on the split-asset approach. The chapter concludes by detailing how the various estimates of natural resources that have been discussed in previous chapters can be recorded in a full sequence of economic accounts, illustrating both the 2025 and 2008 sequence of economic accounts.
Text boxes with a summary of key recommendations are included at the end of Chapters 3-6.
While the guide covers a range of natural resource related topics in detail, there are several topics that were considered out of scope, such as the treatment of emission permits. Research and testing during the work of the EGNC also uncovered various issues which could not be fully resolved such as the treatment of land, radio spectra, and depletion caused by non-resident operators, which therefore were added to the SNA research agenda. Some issues may also be taken forward during the update of the SEEA Central Framework which started in 2024.
There lie several years between the publication of this guide and the implementation of the 2025 SNA which is expected to occur in or around 2030 in most countries. It is hoped that the guide will be a useful resource for countries to start experimental compilation in the years towards this official publication date, thereby supporting a smooth implementation of the 2025 SNA, and will provide a useful tool in the years after, assisting many countries around the world to compile highly reliable and comparable data on different types of natural resources.
