The Capacity Building Workshop on Ocean Account was organized in Apia, Samoa, by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, with technical expertise provided by the Global Ocean Account Partnership. The workshop is a part of the project UN SDG Joint Fund project “Building Forward Better by Safeguarding Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services” for Samoa.
The workshop consisted of hands-on GIS training on mangrove statistics in Samoa as well as workshop on ocean accounting.
The training aimed to enhance the capacity of Samoan governmental officials, as well as relevant stakeholders in using remote sensing data to compile ocean accounts for sustainable ocean planning. Ocean accounting is a framework that extends accounting concepts and principles of the System of Environmental Economic Accounting Central Framework (SEEA-CF) and SEEA Ecosystem Accounting (EA) to the ocean sphere. Focusing on mangrove statistics, the workshop offered participants the opportunity to learn how to produce mangrove cover maps and statistics using spatial data. It also demonstrated how environmental data and ocean accounts could be linked to support policy and decision making.