Ecosystem Services Accounting – Part III - Pilot accounts for habitat and species maintenance, on-site soil retention and water purification

The purpose of ecosystem services accounting is to quantify the main transactions from ecosystems to society and economy and to report these transactions into accounting tables that are compatible with the structures and practices used in traditional economic accounting. The European Commission launched in 2015 the INCA (Integrated system for Natural Capital Accounting) project to produce concrete applications for the EU, compliant with the international standard of the System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Experimental Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EEA). In this report we assess, value and account for three new ecosystem services: Habitat and Species Maintenance, on site Soil Retention and Water Purification. We also review and improve already existing ecosystem services accounts, such as Crop and Timber provision, Carbon Sequestration and Crop Pollination. Based on the nine ecosystem services accounts compiled for the EU, we finally start processing INCA readily available indicators, that can support policy analysis and can contribute to international reference frameworks such as the post 2020 Biodiversity framework and the Sustainable Development Goals.