Page 177 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 2

IPS195 Albert B.
and indicators. On one hand the SEEA-2012-CF mainly covers energy, water
and material benefits supplied by nature entering the economy as well as
certain residuals returned to nature from production and consumption. On the
other hand, the SEEA2012-EEA focuses on the non-material benefits of nature.
Such a division of methodology is completely acceptable when developing
methods and sources as well as testing is the primary goal. Differing priorities
at local, regional and national level may be a further reason. But taking into
account the decades spent by researchers to work on the different
environmental topics, the question could be raised, why not have a single
conceptual basis for environmental accounting. The idea is to draft a common,
more generic methodology, possibly supplemented by technical handbooks
looking at the different ecological areas. As a primary goal such a unified
single methodology could strive for elaborating a holistic indicator reflecting
the ecological situation in one headline figure. Similar to GDP as a holistic
indicator for the economic development, such a single key indicator would
make environmental issues much more visible. This in turn should attract the
attention of people and broaden the perspective of progress. In addition,
more detailed data could be provided for research and for evidence-based
decision making.

3. Measurement issues of ES
3.1 Physical Data
To be able to implement the concept of ES-services and ES-assets source
data are needed, possibly supplemented by estimations. Such data may for
instance be provided by so-called land cover surveys, showing the spatial area
by type in square-km as well as the condition of each land type (on a
representative basis), to be able to determine the impact of human activities
on ES-assets between two reporting dates. A usual classification is to
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distinguish between sea, coastal areas, land etc.
To estimate ES-services by land coverage type a further step is required,
since each land cover type may provide different ES-services at the same time.
For instance, a forest may provide timber and wild fruits (provisioning-
services) and at the same time hiking opportunities (cultural service). If this is
systematically estimated by type of land cover and type of service, the physical
flows of ES can be assessed and presented in the following cross-table / matrix
(SEEA- EEA, 2012, table 2.2),:

A more refined classification of land coverage types is given by the Land Cover Classification
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System of the FAO (in SEEA-EEA, 2012, table 2.1):
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