Séminaire UMR 6308 AMURE

With Lars Hein, Professor ‘Ecosystem Services and Environmental Change’, Wageningen University

• Abstract :

In the past decade, the System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA) has been developed as the mainstream approach to measure the natural capital comprised by ecosystems. SEEA-EA has been developed jointly by statisticians, ecologists, accountants and economists, among others, in an effort coordinated by the UN Statistical Commission. This has resulted in a first framework for SEEA EA (2012), Technical Guidelines (2017) and, in 2021, SEEA EA has, in part, been adopted as a global statistical standard. SEEA EA is now being applied in over 30 countries world-wide. It comprises accounts focusing on ecosystem extent (type), ecosystem condition, ecosystem services as well as a monetary asset account. Additional thematic accounts focus on oceans, urban areas, biodiversity and carbon. This short presentation will present an update on SEEA EA, including EU efforts to institutionalise SEEA EA, methods for SEEA EA, results of pilot accounts developed to date and policy applications, and zoom in on the topic of ocean/marine accounts. In spite of fast progress, there remain a number of methodological challenges in compiling ecosystem accounts, not least in marine areas, for discussion during the seminar.