In service of the
world's agendas for
sustainable development

Wealth Accounting measures assets and capital goods that are inputs to our economic well-being. To support the construction of ecosystem accounts, World Bank Wealth Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services (WAVES) commissioned GeoVille with a detailed assessment of the land cover and land use in Southern Palawan, Philippines. There, changes from natural vegetation to commercial oil palm plantations have caused increased soil erosion, leading to the loss of ecosystem services and environmental problems in the related catchments. These effects will be more costly in the long-term than the income generated by the oil palm plantations.  

With the support of Earth observation imagery, GeoVille assessed the current environmental state and its changes by providing spatially and temporal quantitative and qualitative land cover and land use information for two time periods.  

Earth observation derived information can furthermore be related to the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) that contains the internationally-agreed standard concepts, definitions, classifications, accounting rules and tables for producing internationally-comparable statistics on the environment and their relationship with the economy.