A paper coming forth from a session at the 3rd ESP Europe conference in Tartu titled: ‘National mapping and assessment of ecosystem services projects in Europe – Participants’ experiences, state of the art and lessons learned’ was recently published in Ecosystem Services.
The national mapping and assessment of ecosystem services (ES) has been set out since 2011 with the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2020. By now, most EU Member States implemented mapping and assessment projects to some degree. We surveyed 13 EU Member States’ more recent implementations to give a systematic overview of the components assessed, the data & methods used, and the greatest challenges as perceived by participants.
We found, among others:
- streamlining of projects: national ES mapping & assessment is more homogenous now; the EU policy was supported by increasingly concrete recommendations and methodological guidance
- in the surveyed, more recent projects there were more spatial approaches than in earlier projects, more often ecosystem condition included, but less often future scenarios, or the need to import ES
- uncertainties are rarely quantified; caution in building on invalidated results
- ES assessments can contribute to Ecosystem Accounting, needs further streamlining and standardization of methods
Accounting for our ecosystem assets, including ecosystem services, contributes to highlighting the values of nature around us and can help to protect our environment.
Find the full paper here.