The paper proceeds as follows. First, we demonstrate the public policy demand for standardized units of ecosystem measurement. Second, we advance and defend an economic definition of units of account. Third, we contrast this definition with existing definitions of services and environmental accounting units. Fourth, we concretely illustrate our definition via an inventory of measurable ecosystem services. Clear units of account are fundamental to two policy initiatives whose social desirability we take as self-evident: the effective procurement of environmental quality by governments and clear national measures of well-being arising from environmental public goods and market goods—otherwise known as a.
