**1. Introduction**

Mining, smelting, and refining processes have important environmental impacts: they deplete natural resources, minerals and fossil fuels that cannot be replaced; they use land that affects landscapes and their ecosystems; they discharge wastes into air, waters, and soil; and they can influence in the depletion of renewable natural resources such as biota or ground waters.

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

These activities have accompanied the development of man from the early stages of civilization. To such an extent that the stages of civilization have been named by the prominent resource that supported the era: bronze, iron, coal, and oil Ages. When nature was abundant, the side effects were not taken into account. However, the intense technological development of the twentieth century has forced society to realize them.

Ecosystem Accounts, and Extensions and Applications. The Central Framework, consisting of the internationally agreed standard concepts, definitions, classifications, tables, and accounts

Accounting for Mineral Depletion Under the UN-SEEA Framework

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In particular, the Central Framework of SEEA intends to be a universal single measurement system information on water, energy, minerals, timber, soil, land, ecosystems, pollution and waste, production, and consumption of all interactions that society makes with nature. It recommends presenting the yearly accounts for these interactions in an organized manner parallel to the System of National Accounts. The basis consists of defining and systematically accounting the concept of "environmental assets," which are defined as "the naturally occurring living and non-living components of the Earth, together comprising the biophysical environment that may provide benefits to humanity." These assets are presented in both physical and monetary data. The Central Framework claims that it facilitates comprehension

Universally organized statistics is perhaps the main value of the SEEA, and economists have developed well established procedures to rely on them. To start with, the economists define

Natural inputs are physical flows moving from the environment to production processes. They are mineral, energy or timber resources, also renewable energy resources and finally inputs from soil, water, and air resources. At the same time we produce products, we produce wastes. These are flows discarded, discharged or emitted in the production processes, and absorbed by

Stocks, in physical terms, refer to the total quantity of individual environmental assets at a given point in time. "These assets are defined by their material content without specific reference to their constituent elements." This is a major drawback since tons of a given metal do not tell about its wealth. Its mineral composition, ore grade, accompanying minerals or

The physical units of these flows and stocks vary with their type and are measured according

The way the physical flow is accounted follows the structure of monetary and use supply tables that are used to show transactions in products between different economic entities like industries, households, government, and the rest of the world. The structure of the physical supply and use tables (PSUT) adds another entity: the environment. This is made by adding columns and rows that consider the flows going into and leaving from it. In addition, the

Energy and water flows are accounted in physical units in a cradle-to-grave way. The physical flow accounts for materials are a complex subject for SEEA; this is because of its diversity as compared to energy and water flows. The SEEA uses the mass basis for each

tables show separate accounts for materials flows, water and energy sub-systems.

of data by scientists and economists and brings a bridge between them.

the environment in the form of solid, liquid or gaseous materials and energy.

to the System of International units, mass, length, volume, joules, etc.

was completed in 2013.

flows and stocks.

type of material.

**2.1. General considerations about the SEEA**

burden for instance can be very variable.

In this ambition, environmental economists have developed methods to evaluate the economic effect that has the use of natural resources to support our economic activities. They convert physical assets and impacts on ecosystems into monetary accounts, which are added or subtracted from the aggregated accounts, and finally, from the gross domestic product (GDP). The advantage of using monetary units is that it allows comparing among other environmental assets and aggregating them to look for their contribution of the wealth of a country.

However, as an agreement among economists is difficult to attain, and it is of paramount importance to yearly account for the human appropriation and use of nature, the United Nations proposed to develop a System of Environmental-Economic Accounts (SEEA). It consists of a satellite account system for reflecting the environmental deterioration proposed to adjust the System of National Accounts (SNAs). This is an optimum reference framework to follow in the description of economic valuation methods.<sup>1</sup> In fact it is an important tool to manage appropriate resources and thus ensure sustainable consumption and production as advocated by the UN Sustainable Development Goal Number 12.

This chapter explains the capabilities and drawbacks of the system of environmental and economic accounts. Subsequently, we describe an alternative approach for assessing abiotic resource depletion through the second law of thermodynamics. Finally, a proposal for accounting depletion based on the organized structure of the SEEA is provided.
