The ecosystem service assessment challenge: Reflections from Flanders-REA

Abstract

This paper aims to improve ecosystem assessment practice by sharing the lessons learned from the Flanders Regional Ecosystem Assessment. The ‘EU biodiversity strategy to 2020’, requests the EU member states ‘to map and assess the state of ecosystems and their services by 2014’. However, a large number of member states have yet to start this assessment, and depend on assistance from the European Commission and on experiences from ongoing national assessments. In the region of Flanders (Belgium), several ecosystem service projects have since 2009 led the way to the ‘Flanders Regional Ecosystem Assessment’ (Flanders-REA), led by the governments’ leading research institute on biodiversity. To attain high regional requirements on scientific quality, acceptance and effective local policy impact, this assessment has tackled a number of challenges. The challenges discussed in this paper are obtaining conceptual clarity and consensus across disciplines and partners, the integration of multiple sources of information, critical handling of maps and the inclusion of experts and stakeholders. This paper also critically reflects on the definition of EU targets, their implementation, the current EU assistance to the member states, and the alignment with actual local and global policy needs.

Introduction

The field of ecosystem services continues a long-standing tradition in economic science and revolves around the sustainable and equitable use of natural resources. After the somewhat polemic promotion of the concept in the 1990s (see Baveye et al., 2013), ecosystem services and especially their valuation recently regained wider attention of high-level policy institutions and the nature conservation research community (for a critical review of the concept's history see Baveye et al., 2013, Gómez-Baggethun et al., 2010). This resulted in a broader mainstreaming of the concept and its percolation into various policy documents during the last decade.

The Aichi Targets, adopted by the convention on biological diversity (CBD), explicitly put forward a rationale on ecosystem service provision, aiming at sustainability and equity in ecosystem service delivery.¹ The achievement of these targets is envisioned by 2020. In line with this ambition, the European Commission developed a biodiversity strategy for Europe.² The strategy is similarly divided in targets and actions and emphasizes the (strict) economic notion more strongly. There are six main targets and 20 actions to help Europe reach its goal. Target two, action five is directly linked to ecosystem services: ‘member states, with the assistance of the Commission, will map and assess the state of ecosystems and their services in their national territory by 2014, assess the economic value of such services, and promote the integration of these values into accounting and reporting systems at EU and national level by 2020’. The assistance of the European Commission is embodied in the working group MAES (mapping and assessment of ecosystem services), which to date has provided two guidance documents (Maes et al., 2013a, Maes et al., 2013b).

Up till now, most member states have not reached the 2014 goal yet, and demand for assistance and inter-state exchange is increasing. The current evolutions and several assessments on EU scale are tracked by the MAES working group.³ Adding to available frameworks (MEA, 2005; TEEB, 2009; Jacobs et al., 2013, Maes et al., 2013a), specific lessons were drawn from the United Kingdom National Ecosystem Assessment (UK-NEA, 2011), the Japan Satoyama Satoumi Assessment (JSSA, 2010), and active exchanges with Dutch colleagues.⁴

Flanders, the northern region of the Belgian federal state, has seen a surge in ecosystem services projects and networks during the last 6 years (Segers et al., 2013). Following this build-up of critical mass and scientific capacity, the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO) decided to focus its statutory nature reporting task on supporting Target 2, Action 5 of the EU Biodiversity Strategy. Reporting on the ‘state of nature’ is a legal obligation: ‘to report on the state of nature in Flanders, the expected evolutions under alternative policy scenarios, and the evaluation of past policy’.⁵ Taking the EU-targets into account, the biennial reporting process was extended to an ‘assessment of the state and trends of ecosystems and their services in Flanders (2014), the development of policy tools and procedures with regard to ecosystem services (2016), and the analysis of alternative scenarios for Flanders (2018)’. The first reporting phase, the state and trends assessment, was finished in 2014 and presented to policy makers in February 2015 (Stevens et al., 2015). This paper mainly focusses on organizational and methodological aspects of the assessment, in order to address common challenges of regional assessments toward reaching European and global policy targets. Results on state and trends of ecosystem services are presented and discussed in brief, as for the detailed assessment results; technical methods and discussion, the 1500 page technical assessment report, its synthesis and the online ecosystem service maps⁶ can be consulted.