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In May of this year the European Commission presented the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. The strategy aims to restore threatened or already degraded ecosystems in Europe by the year 2030 and to halt biodiversity loss. “The problem is that we do not have a consistent picture of how biodiversity is changing across different species and taxonomic groups - for example mammals or amphibians – in the different regions of Europe,” says Professor Henrique Pereira, a researcher at MLU and iDiv. There are numerous studies and data on biodiversity in Europe; however, the collected data are often limited to time and place, and to individual species or taxonomic groups. Therefore, it is often difficult to compare the data. “A systematic, up-to-date information system that reflects the status of Europe’s biodiversity and ecosystems is needed in order to establish informed policy measures. It must also be geared to the needs of policymakers,” says Pereira.

The global consultation on the complete draft of the System Environmental-Economic Accounting—Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) has been launched and is ongoing until 30 November 2020.

The Joint Research Centre released on 21 October an EU ecosystem assessment. This study highlights the urgency to tackle biodiversity loss and finds that we are becoming more and more dependent on our ecosystems, which themselves are under increasing pressure from climate change and its related impacts. The assessment is a firs step to develop an EU aggregated condition account.