Nieuwsbericht Bruno Smets 28 February 2024

Continuation of support to Eurostat on Ecosystem Accounting

Bring Ecosystem Account Production in Operation

We are proud to announce that Eurostat, a Directorate-General of the European Commision, has selected the VITO-led consortium to continue  its support on Ecosystem Accounting - 2024-2026, to prepare the regular production of ecosystem accounts in the European Union (EU) in a well-coordinated and methodologically robust way.

Ecosystem accounting is a statistical framework for organising data, tracking changes in the extent and the condition of ecosystems, measuring ecosystem services and linking this information to economic and other human activities to illustrate the benefits society receives from ecosystems and their services. The official statistical standard of ecosystem accounting is the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA - EA).

During the period 2021-2023, the consortium assisted the European Commission (Eurostat) in the development of a set of methodological guidelines how the official statistical standard can be used to produce the ecosystem accounts at Member State level as well as at EU level. The consortium also developed a QGIS plug-in tool to facilitate this production, and used this tool to generate a new set of EU-wide ecosystem accounts in cooperation with the Joint Research Center. The Tool as well as the EU accounts can be found online, and support 9 ecosystem services:

  • Provisioning services: wood provision, crop provision, crop pollination
  • Regulating services: global climate regulation, local climate regulation, flood control, air filtration, soil retention
  • Recreation services: nature-based tourism

 

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The next three years (2024-2026), we will further assist the European Commission (Eurostat) in preparing the operational regular (yearly) production of ecosystem accounts by the Member States.
The consortium will

  • develop a first Ecosystem Accounting statistical handbook for the EU,
  • provide traning and support to the EU Member States and beyond,
  • maintain the QGIS tool &
  • further improve the production and validation of ecosystem accounts.

The new project is funded by the European Commission and awarded by Eurostat (2023.0391) to the consortium led by VITO (Belgium), in support with Ecounting (The Netherlands), EFTEC (United Kingdom) and IDEEA Global (Ireland).

 

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