The course introduces the students to the subject of ecosystem accounting and provides the core knowledge of the underlying principles and major technical areas of this new and emerging accounting branch.

Ecosystem Services Approach expands the focus beyond how development affects ecosystems, to include how development depends on ecosystems. In addition to focusing on how to protect ecosystems from development, we can also consider how to invest in managing ecosystems for development.

A key aspect of ecosystem accounting is that it allows the contributions of ecosystems to society to be expressed in monetary terms so those contributions to society’s well-being can be more easily compared to other goods and services we are more familiar with.