The Sri Lankan Government is yet to mobilise efforts towards placing value on its environmental assets, in preparation of adopting its own Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) framework, in line with the United Nation’s System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) framework, Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA) Senior Advisor Dr Herath Gunatilake said on Tuesday (10), speaking at a Policy Workshop held in Colombo by the Asian Development Bank.

Responding to a question on the challenges Sri Lanka currently faces in initiating work towards its own framework, Herath said: “An important area in environmental economics is the Government putting the valuation part off for later, because the capacity is free.”

He said that in addition to the lack of motion on the Government’s end, Sri Lanka appears to have a dearth of persons with expertise on biophysical modelling, with the capacity to independently address the full scope of framework’s requirements.

Based on available literature made publicly available on efforts made to deploy ecosystem valuation in Sri Lanka, the University of Peradeniya and International Water Management Institute (IWMI) hold the quantitative and GIS analysis capacity to develop modeling frameworks and deploy tools.

Herath continued: “Natural Capital Accounting requires biophysical modelling, we also need to form some working groups. We do not know how many ecologists and biologists are doing this kind of work. We need to take stocks and see who is capable and provide some incentives to projects for biologists to work on them, that is one area.” 

“There is no new layer of environmental economists in this country working on valuation. This capacity constraint is a global issue.” 

Sri Lanka officially launched its National Climate Finance Strategy (2025-2030) in October 2025, to mobilise resources for climate resilience, adaptation and net-zero transition. Within the Strategy, Sri Lanka is to introduce a Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) primary data framework, which is to measure and price Sri Lanka’s environmental assets. 

By way of the implementation of this framework, Sri Lanka is to integrate its ecosystems directly into its national economic accounting and budgeting.

Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) Deputy Director in the National Accounts Division Ishanthi Kulathilaka, speaking at the same event also said that one of the main challenges in data collection, in preparation of the framework, was the lack of institutional coordination on data collection, as the DCS is not capable of collecting environmental/ecological data. 

“When it comes to the challenges that we are facing in implementing the Natural Capital Accounting system in Sri Lanka, the first thing we see is a lack of institutional coordination, in the environmental statistics sector. This is because environmental statistics are generated by various institutions, using various indexes. There should be a strong mechanism and coordination between these institutions.”

“The Department of Census and Statistics alone cannot collect data required for natural capital accounting. We need the Ministry of Environment, which has the capacity and the interest to coordinate with us to implement the NCA. They do not have the experience in environmental science related or ecological sector data. There’s an issue with that.” 

Kulathilaka also highlighted the need for a centralised data sharing system, and harmonising of collected data across agencies through addressing the differences in data classifications.

“Another thing is, we do not see one centralised data sharing system in this country. Further, we see differences in data classifications; be it definitions, measures of units and differences in data collections periods. That’s another issue we are facing. When it comes to the Department of Census and Statistics, our statistical staff are well trained for, and well experienced in data collection.”

“Our data collection officers are well experienced in collecting the demographic, social and economic data. What we see is environmental statistics; the scientific based data, should be assigned to specific agencies like the Forest Department, the Biodiversity Division – which the DCS can integrate into the systems. We can provide our statistical standards and coordinate data systems.”