While our Director, Mark Eigenraam, was working with the Department of Environment, Land Water and Planning (DELWP) in Victoria, he produced one of the first sets of marine and coastal ecosystem accounts. The study built on previous environmental-economic accounting undertaken by the Victorian Government to demonstrate the relationship between healthy bays and economic and societal wellbeing in Victoria. It was produced to support the 2016 State of the Bays Report and aligns with the environmental reporting reform articulated in the Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability’s State and Benefit Framework.
The study used available data to produce a pilot set of natural capital accounts for Port Phillip Bay. The approach allowed for the integration of terrestrial accounting with marine and coastal accounting to provide a more complete picture of the economic and environmental relationships. This work provided a set of information that can be used to make decisions involving trade-offs between the use and management of marine ecosystems in a transparent and consistent manner.