The Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) is a process of classifying ecosystem services from the perspective of easier integration into the economy and environmental accounting. As such, CICES is developed and continuously updated in concordance with the evolution of the SEEA standards, which in turn influence them, because this classification represents the European Environment Agency’s (EEA) contribution to the SEEA endeavor. Its existence is due to the increasing realization that “a certain standardization is necessary in the way we describe ecosystem services, so that ecosystem accounting methods can be developed and comparisons can be made. Standardization has been considered particularly important when connecting with economic accounting.” and that “more systematic approaches are needed for naming and describing ecosystem services.”
The EEA is responsible for developing CICES since the beginning (the first “working” version being in 2013), and, being a European agency, it directly correlates with the information and data from the MAES evaluation (the next sub-chapter), the ongoing program of mapping and evaluation of ecosystem services in the European Union. Support for completing CICES was also provided through EU-funded projects such as ESMERALDA, OpenNESS, EU KIP INCA, and from the consultant Fabis Consulting. The working version for 2018 (August) is V5.1 from January 2018, and for its coherent and efficient use, an official guide is also available. CICES is used by the German NEA-DE mapping and as support for mappings in other European countries. To date, there remain semantic divergences between services, benefits, and goods, in the sense that they can overlap or derive some from others.
The CICES classification summarizes the system of organizing a possible set of architectural interfaces that offer ecosystem services. The CICES system, initiated by the EEA as support for the international environmental accounting standard SEEA, classifies from a biophysical structure or a process, to a function, to a service, to a benefit, finally arriving at (a) value.
