Healthy ecosystems and biodiversity underpin human well-being. However, increasing anthropogenic pressures are driving environmental degradation, depleting natural capital stocks and undermining the capacity of ecosystems to provide essential ecosystem services. As ecosystem degradation is now recognised as a multidimensional crisis (environmental, economic, and social), the demand for integrated frameworks has grown, aiming to reflect both our dependence on nature and the impacts of human activity. In this context, the United Nations launched in 2021 the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA), an integrated and comprehensive statistical framework for organising data about habitats and landscapes. The SEEA-EA offers a spatially explicit and integrative approach to organising biophysical data, assessing ecosystem services and assets in both physical and monetary terms, monitoring changes in ecosystem extent and condition, and linking ecological information with national economic accounts. Developed through a multidisciplinary process, the framework addresses key policy needs by making visible the role of ecosystems in supporting human systems while capturing the environmental consequences of economic activities. This study presents a methodological overview of the SEEA-EA framework, outlining its structure, components, and principles. Moreover, it highlights how the framework enables the mainstreaming of natural capital and ecosystem services into cross-sectoral decision-making and accounting practices. In addition to the potential of the SEEA-EA in supporting more coherent, transparent, and accountable policy frameworks that align economic development with ecological sustainability, this contribution also explores the main challenges associated with its implementation, including data limitations, uncertainties in valuation methods, spatial mismatches, and debates around the inclusion of non-market services and the risk of monetary reductionism. Through this analysis, the contribution aims to advance the understanding of the SEEA-EA framework as a tool for evidence-based environmental governance and to stimulate further reflection on its development and application for the conservation and sustainable management of ecosystems.