Fact Sheet: Biden-⁠Harris Administration Releases National Strategy to Put Nature on the Nation’s Balance Sheet

At this time, the Biden-Harris Administration released the ultimate Nationwide Technique to Develop Statistics for Environmental-Financial Selections, a historic roadmap that can kick off a multi-year effort to place nature on the nation’s stability sheet for the primary time, with an emphasis on higher information to grasp nature’s essential contributions to the U.S. financial system and to information coverage and enterprise choices transferring ahead.
 
Present nationwide financial statistics measure the U.S. financial system in a way that doesn’t account for the position and worth of underlying pure belongings, resembling land, water, minerals, animals, and crops. With out pure capital mirrored in nationwide statistics, the US can not totally monitor the position of pure capital in driving financial development, making it more durable for private and non-private sectors to plan for the long run. Increasing the nationwide financial accounting system to incorporate pure capital will higher seize the hyperlinks between nature and the financial system and result in a extra inclusive and complete accounting of the U.S. financial system.
 
The White Home Workplace of Science and Know-how Coverage (OSTP), the Workplace of Administration and Price range (OMB), and the U.S. Division of Commerce led the event of the ultimate Nationwide Technique to Develop Statistics for Environmental-Financial Selections, working with greater than 27 federal departments and businesses on the desk, and incorporating enter acquired from throughout sectors throughout a public open remark interval.
 
“Pure belongings, like land and water, underpin companies, improve high quality of life, and act as a stabilizing power for financial prosperity and alternative. In addition they assist counteract the destabilizing dangers to our surroundings and markets brought on by local weather change and nature loss. But the connections between nature and the financial system usually are not at the moment mirrored in our nationwide financial statistics,” wrote OSTP Director Arati Prabhakar, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and OMB Director Shalanda Younger, in a letter introducing the report. “The Nationwide Technique provides us a path to vary that. Clearly measuring the amount and worth of pure capital will allow extra correct financial development forecasts and facilitate a extra full image of financial progress to tell how we prioritize investments.”
 
Utilizing current authorities and constructing on and integrating quite a few current pure capital measurement efforts throughout the federal government, implementation of the Last Nationwide Technique to Develop Statistics for Environmental-Financial Selections will set up the knowledge wanted to make knowledgeable choices that improve financial prosperity within the current, whereas securing future nature-dependent financial alternatives.
 
The ultimate Nationwide Technique to Develop Statistics for Environmental-Financial Selections is available here.