image: MAIA Workshop on the SEEA Ecosystem Accounting 2021 view more
Credit: MAIA Project
The SEEA Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) constitutes an integrated and comprehensive statistical framework for organising data about habitats and landscapes and is the main methodological approach of the MAIA project. In relation to this and in an effort to maximise the project impact, while also discussing the immediate actions ahead, the consortium along with external members, gathered for a MAIA-organised workshop on SEEA Ecosystem Accounting 2021.
MAIA – Mapping and Assessment for Integrated Ecosystem Accounting promotes the mainstreaming of natural capital accounting (NCA) in EU member states and Norway. The main methodological basis of the project is the System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA).
Slowly stepping out of the COVID-19 restrictions, MAIA ran the workshop on 29 March 2022 in Madrid, Spain. A hybrid format allowed for around 60 people to take part in the workshop online and more than 35 MAIA members and stakeholders to attend on site.
The main focus of the workshop was for MAIA partners and the representatives of several European institutions - the European Environment Agency(EEA), the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the Spanish Statistical Office (INE) and the European Commission - to review the current status of SEEA EA development and implementation. The project consortium demonstrated the progress in the ten MAIA countries (Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Finland, Norway, Belgium, Greece, Bulgaria, France and the Czech Republic) with presentations covering the biophysical and monetary ecosystem accounting in EU member states and globally.
Followed by fruitful knowledge-exchange discussions, each session covered important issues related to the contribution of ecosystem services to the economic sector, how they change and develop over time, as well as the national progress in the advancement and incorporation of business models into natural capital accounting.
Moreover, the workshop continued to explore future actions needed to further deploy ecosystem accounting during two roundtables on biophysical and monetary accounts. Amongst the suggestions given by the MAIA partners and some of the stakeholders was the improvement of the quality of the current European environmental accounting as well as negotiating further updates on the relevant for the project EU regulations.
“We face an urgent question as an ecosystem accounting community, to not only clarify but also to examine what we do with the monetary and all other values that we find. We have made great progress and should not slow down, we should continue with the great work we have been doing as a community,” project coordinator Prof. Lars Hein from the Wageningen University (WUR), the Netherlands comments.
In accordance with this, idea sharing towards further actions of the project continued. Some of the most prominent points that were touched upon were related to enhancing the communication between the national teams; taking into consideration the user needs and providing relevant solutions for their needs and organising more frequent national and international meetings for knowledge exchange.
Last but not least, the MAIA workshop ended with a poster presentation showcasing the progress of all of the MAIA involved countries.
Recordings of the workshop are available on the MAIA YouTube channel.
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This project receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 817527.