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The benefits provided by ecosystem services, such as crop pollination and water purification, are of great importance to any economy, both directly and indirectly. Therefore, nature-inclusive decision-making requires that such benefits are taken into account in the economic decision-making process. However, in most assessments, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which shows the total value of output/income generated in a country, is used as the main economic development indicator, not capturing fully the contributions of nature to economic activity and human well-being. The concept of Gross...

On December 19, 2023, Eurostat initiated a data collection effort for ecosystem extent accounts for countries that are part of the European Statistical System (ESS). This marks the first official EU data collection on ecosystem accounts, with countries currently being asked to provide data on a voluntary basis. The data collection adheres to the terms and definitions of SEEA Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) and additional technical specifications and practical guidance outlined in the Guidance note on ecosystem extent accounts. A key component of the Guidance note is the EU ecosystem typology...

National and local authorities are promoting restoration actions in urban areas to mitigate societal challenges such as urban heat island, poor air quality or biodiversity loss. Urban re-greening is among the implementation actions supporting targets of the European Green Deal, EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030, its proposal for a Nature Restoration Law, and the proposal for an amendment of the Regulation on Environmental Accounts. However, to monitor progress towards policy targets and an overall enhancement of urban ecosystems, policy makers require regular, consistent and comparable data. The...

Just published in Nature Communications, follow the link for the full paper: Covering 35% of Europe’s land area, forest ecosystems play a crucial role in safeguarding biodiversity and mitigating climate change. Yet, forest degradation continues to undermine key ecosystem services that forests deliver to society. Here we provide a spatially explicit assessment of the condition of forest ecosystems in Europe following a United Nations global statistical standard on ecosystem accounting, adopted in March 2021. We measure forest condition on a scale from 0 to 1, where 0 represents a degraded...

We are delighted to announce an exciting upcoming workshop on EO for Ecosystem Accounting hosted by the European Space Agency in collaboration with the United Nations Statistics Division and GEO EO4EA. The workshop will take place November 28 - December 1, 2022. (Please find the website event page, details, and registration information here: https://eo4ea-2022.esa.int) This workshop will bring together experts in Earth Observation and experts in Ecosystem Accounting to jointly discuss the key challenges that need to be addressed in order to use Earth Observation in compiling national ecosystem...

BiodiverCities is a European Parliament Pilot Project, developed with the aim of enhancing the use of Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) to enhance the condition of urban ecosystems, providing benefits for people and nature. In this report, an evaluation around the most appropriate reporting unit for an urban ecosystems assessment is carried out, comparing Functional Urban Areas (FUA) and Local Administrative Units (LAU). Furthermore, UGI are assessed from a multi-scale perspective. The status and scenarios of UGI in European urbanised areas is first analysed measuring the urban green areas and...

Economy is embedded within nature, with all its risks and opportunities. There is the need for the financial system to channel public and private investments to enhance the stock of natural assets and encourage sustainable consumption and production activities throughout an ecological transition. However, an ecological transition may imply to protect, restore, and preserve nature and reverse the accelerating trajectory of its loss. With respect to this transition, one critical issue to address is the availability and usability of appropriate environmental metrics. The challenge addressed by...

The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 calls for developing an EU-wide methodology to map, assess and achieve good condition of ecosystems, so they can deliver benefits to society through the provision of ecosystem services. The EU-wide methodology presented in this report addresses this methodological gap. The EU-wide methodology has adopted the System of Environmental Economic Accounting - Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) as reference framework. The SEEA EA is an integrated framework for organizing biophysical information about ecosystems, adopted as a global statistical standard by the United...

The Integrated system for Natural Capital Accounting (INCA) was developed and supported by the European Commission to test and implement the System of integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA). Through the compilation of nine Ecosystem Services (ES) accounts, INCA can make available to any interested ecosystem accountant a number of lessons learned. Amongst the conceptual lessons learned, we can mention: (i) for accounting purposes, ES should be clustered according to the existence (or not) of a sustainability threshold; (ii) the assessment of ES flow...