Natural Capital Accounting For Integrated Biodiversity Policies PDF Download

Maintaining 'natural capital', i.e. ecosystems and the services they provide, is fundamental to human economic activity and well-being. The need to conserve and enhance natural capital is therefore an explicit policy target in the EU's Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 and its Seventh Environment Action Programme. Approaches to measuring the stocks of natural resources that yield benefits as natural capital have gained considerable traction in recent decades. By providing regular, objective data that are consistent with wider statistical data, natural capital accounting can provide the fundamental evidence base required for informing economic and environmental decision making that delivers on these ambitions for natural capital. The System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) is the statistical framework for compiling natural capital accounts. The SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EEA) is the part of the SEEA that provides the framework for ecosystem accounting. The European Environment Agency (EEA) has been a key contributor to developing the SEEA-EEA. The EEA is now working with Eurostat, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre and the European Commission Directorates General for the Environment (DG ENV) and Research and Innovation (DG RTD) to test the application of the SEEA-EEA in the EU (via the Knowledge innovation project on an integrated system for natural capital and ecosystem services accounting in the EU (KIP INCA)). This report presents the EEA's work on natural capital accounting, discusses the use of natural capital accounts in support of policymaking and reflects on the intrinsic value of biodiversity, which cannot only be measured in monetary terms.