In March 2025, the United Nations Statistical Commission unanimously recommended that member countries adopt the most recent update of the System of National Accounts (SNA).
You can find the updated document here.
The SNA is the statistical standard that underpins global macro-economic measurement, including GDP. Significantly, the most recent update – the 2025 SNA – incorporates important advances in accounting for natural resources and other aspects of wellbeing and sustainability.
Last year we reported on the updates made to the SNA, and the substantial consultation involved in that process.
Our Director, Carl Obst, led the drafting of the three new chapters on wellbeing and sustainability.
He says:
‘The explicit recognition of wellbeing and sustainability issues in the SNA highlights that measurement of the environment must be considered a fundamental part of understanding and measuring the economy.‘
Well-known Australian economist, Dr Ken Henry, addressed the 56th meeting of the UN Statistical Commission. He spoke widely of the importance of including natural capital in macro-economic framing and talked of the benefits of measurements beyond GDP:
‘The fact that the SNA produces a single number for GDP, aggregating across millions of individual transactions, some of which are necessarily imputed, is frequently described as its greatest strength. But it is also a weakness. The temptation to infer that things are getting better for citizens for no better reason than that real GDP is increasing, or that the citizens of one country are better off than those in another if real GDP per capita (in purchasing power parity terms) is higher, is understandable. But it is seriously misguided.’
He went on to say:
‘Reflecting on the history of the past 70 years, I think it reasonable to conclude that the SNA has permitted policy makers to achieve aggregate economic outcomes much better than what would otherwise have been achieved, even though it has clearly not prevented numerous economic and financial crises over that period. But I also think it reasonable to conclude that the lack of data concerning the condition of natural capital, prepared on a basis that mirrors the rigour of the SNA, with its detailed supply and use tables, balance sheets and so on, goes a long way to explaining why humanity is now confronting a set of crises of far greater importance.’
You can read Dr Henry’s speech in full here.
You can also watch the introduction of the 2025 SNA here. This session was held prior to the 56th session of the United Nations Statistical Commission, held from March 4–7, 2025.