Thematic urban ecosystem accounts - challenges, lessons and ways forward

Ecosystem accounts can serve as a framework to monitor changes not only in natural ecosystems, but also in anthropogenic ones such as urban ecosystems. Urban ecosystems are both drivers of global and local biodiversity change, and the primary living spaces for humans. This makes urban ecosystem accounts a valuable tool for revealing trade-offs between multiple benefits and for in-forming diverse sets of policies at various spatial levels. Developing a global urban ecosystem ac-counting framework could also help enhance our understanding of urban ecosystems and their sustainable management. To introduce the topic of the session on “Advancing the application of ecosystem accounting to urban ecosystems”, we discuss the potential development of a global urban ecosystem accounting framework based on SEEA-EA thematic accounts. Moving from a review of the literature, we outline key challenges in thematic urban ecosystem accounting, and present potential solutions based on lessons and approaches gathered from past experiences. Our analysis shows that urban ecosystem accounts share challenges with accounts of most ecosystems. However, challenges related to ecosystem extent and condition accounts are mainly specific to urban or anthropogenic ecosystems. Various approaches have been used to define and classify urban ecosystems, but there is no global consensus in terms of delimitation and classification yet, at least from an accounting perspective. The analysis also highlights that policy uses of urban ecosystem accounts are varied but often unclear, with local policy push potentially lacking in part due to this issue. As a final reflection, we note that urban ecosystem challenges are interrelated, and some are dependent on each other. This reflection sets the stage for the ESP session, where current conceptual, methodological, and operational advances (and strategies) for addressing these challenges will be discussed.