Urban Ecosystem accounts following the SEEA EA standard: A pilot application in Europe

National and local authorities are promoting restoration actions in urban areas to mitigate societal challenges such as urban heat island, poor air quality or biodiversity loss. Urban re-greening is among the implementation actions supporting targets of the European Green Deal, EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030, its proposal for a Nature Restoration Law, and the proposal for an amendment of the Regulation on Environmental Accounts. However, to monitor progress towards policy targets and an overall enhancement of urban ecosystems, policy makers require regular, consistent and comparable data. The implementation of United Nation's System of Environmental Economic Accounting - Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) on urban ecosystems could help to track changes in their ecosystem extent, condition, services and derived benefits. Despite SEEA EA became a statistical standard, it has been only tested in pilot exercises, of which very few are urban ecosystem accounts. This report presents a pilot SEEA EA urban ecosystem account for EU-27 and EFTA Member States in 2018. It discusses challenges for the development of urban ecosystem accounts and potential solutions. The outputs illustrate where re-greening efforts should be applied and discusses feasibility and potential issues of targets. The report also presents key insights to operationalise SEEA EA for urban ecosystem accounts. It provides an instructive guiding example to national and local authorities starting to draft their own urban ecosystem accounts.