ValueEcoServ is a Romanian project focused on evaluating ecosystem services in protected areas. It was implemented by the National Centre for Sustainable Development and supported through a grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway under Romania’s Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Programme. The project produced a practical methodological guide for rapid ecosystem service assessment, with an emphasis on using a simple, fast, and relatively low-cost approach.

What ValueEcoServ Is

ValueEcoServ was created to help identify and assess the ecosystem services provided by protected areas in Romania. The project recognized that evaluating ecosystem services can be methodologically difficult, especially when the goal is to assess many ecosystems in a short time.

To address that challenge, the project team developed a rapid assessment method based largely on input from social actors and beneficiaries of ecosystem services. That made the approach more practical for field use and more suitable for decision-making in conservation and protected-area management.

Why It Matters

The project matters because protected areas provide many benefits beyond biodiversity conservation alone. They support recreation, water regulation, carbon storage, landscape value, and other ecosystem services that contribute to human well-being.

By making these services visible, ValueEcoServ helps decision-makers understand the broader value of protected areas. That is important for land-use planning, conservation funding, and public policy, because ecosystem services are often overlooked when ecosystems are discussed only in ecological terms.

How the Method Works

The guide developed through ValueEcoServ describes a three-step process. First, it identifies ecosystem services through sociological surveys and group discussions with stakeholders. Second, it evaluates the social importance of those services and ranks them using opinion surveys, group debate, and a relevance index.

Third, it estimates monetary value by choosing a reference ecosystem service, assigning a value to it, and then calculating total use and non-use values across the site. This combination of participatory and economic methods makes the assessment more grounded in local realities while still producing results that can support policy and management.

Connection to Ecosystem Services

ValueEcoServ is part of a larger international trend that treats ecosystem services as essential inputs to human well-being and decision-making. The project fits within the same broad framework used by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and later ecosystem-service valuation work.

In this sense, ValueEcoServ is not just a local technical exercise. It is part of the effort to translate ecosystem-service concepts into practical tools that can help governments and conservation actors make better choices about nature, land use, and development.

Why It Is Useful

The main value of ValueEcoServ is that it offers a more accessible way to assess ecosystem services in protected areas. Traditional valuation methods can be complex, costly, and slow, while this project aimed to make the process faster and more usable in real planning contexts.

That makes the project useful for managers, policymakers, and researchers who need a realistic method for understanding what protected areas provide to people. It also helps build public awareness by showing that ecosystems generate measurable social and economic value, not just environmental benefits.

Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: A Framework for Assessment was the first major product of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and was published in 2003. It set out the conceptual basis for understanding how ecosystem change affects human well-being and why that relationship matters for policy, planning, and poverty reduction.

What the report is

The report was designed as a framework document for the broader Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an international work program created to provide decision-makers with scientific information on ecosystem change. It was published by Island Press in Washington, D.C., and served as the foundation for the later assessment reports released in 2005.

Its main purpose was to define the assessment’s scope, explain the concepts being used, and show how ecosystems and human societies are linked. In that sense, it was less a standalone policy report and more the intellectual backbone of the entire MEA process.

Why it mattered

The report mattered because it helped formalize the idea that ecosystems are not separate from human development. Instead, ecosystems provide services that shape health, livelihoods, security, and quality of life.

This framing was influential because it gave researchers and policymakers a common language for discussing environmental change. Rather than treating nature only as a conservation issue, the report connected ecosystem condition to human well-being, poverty alleviation, and long-term development.

Main ideas

A central idea in the framework is that ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems. These include provisioning services such as food and water, regulating services such as climate and flood control, cultural services such as recreation, and supporting services such as nutrient cycling and soil formation.

The report also emphasized that human actions alter ecosystems, and those changes can improve well-being for some people while harming others. That means ecosystem management is not just about protecting nature; it is also about making trade-offs explicit and improving outcomes across societies.

Structure and scope

As a framework document, the report established a structure for later analysis. It outlined the links between ecosystems, ecosystem services, human well-being, drivers of change, and possible responses.

This structure became one of the most important contributions of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. It gave later studies a way to organize evidence about environmental change and to compare different types of responses at local, national, and global scales.

Lasting influence

The 2003 framework report had a lasting impact on environmental policy and research. It helped shape the modern conversation around ecosystem services, natural capital, biodiversity, and sustainable development.

Its importance is also historical: it was the first product of a four-year global assessment that would go on to become one of the most cited environmental evaluations of its time. For that reason, it remains a key reference for anyone studying the evolution of ecosystem science and policy.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) was a major global study that examined how ecosystem change affects human well-being. It was launched in 2001 and published in 2005, and it became one of the most influential assessments in environmental policy and research.

What the MEA Was

The MEA was created to assess the consequences of ecosystem change for people and to provide a scientific basis for better decisions about conservation and sustainable use. It involved more than 1,300 contributors from around 95 countries, which made it one of the most comprehensive international environmental assessments of its time.

The assessment was developed under the broad call of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and was designed to answer practical questions about the state of the world’s ecosystems and their links to human well-being. Its findings were published in several volumes and synthesis reports that covered trends, scenarios, and response options.

Why It Was Important

The MEA was important because it changed how policymakers and researchers talk about nature. It helped popularize the idea of ecosystem services, meaning the benefits people receive from ecosystems such as food, water, timber, fuel, climate regulation, and disease control.

It also delivered a powerful message: humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively in the past 50 years than at any other comparable period in history. Those changes have improved human well-being in some ways, but they have also caused major losses in ecosystem services and increased risks for future generations.

Main Findings

One of the MEA’s key conclusions was that ecosystem degradation is closely tied to human activity and economic development. The assessment found that while some people benefited from ecosystem changes, others faced increased poverty, vulnerability, and environmental decline.

It also warned that degradation of ecosystem services could worsen and become a barrier to development goals if not addressed. At the same time, the MEA showed that many problems could be reduced or reversed through better policies, institutions, and practices.

Long-Term Impact

The MEA had a lasting effect on environmental policy, planning, and research. It provided a strong baseline for later work on biodiversity, natural capital, and nature-based solutions.

Its influence can still be seen in modern climate and ecosystem policy, where the links between ecological health and human well-being are now widely accepted. In that sense, the MEA helped move the global conversation from “protect nature” to “protect nature because human societies depend on it”.

Why It Still Matters

The MEA remains relevant because the pressures it identified have only intensified in many parts of the world. Climate change, biodiversity loss, land conversion, pollution, and water stress continue to affect ecosystems and the services they provide.

For that reason, the MEA is still used as a reference point in environmental policy and education. It remains a landmark example of how science can shape global understanding and public decision-making.

Ecosystem disservices are the negative effects that natural systems can have on human well-being. They include things like crop pests, flooding, landslides, wildfire risk, invasive species, and disease transmission.

What the term means

The idea of ecosystem disservices was developed to complement the concept of ecosystem services. While ecosystem services describe the benefits nature provides, disservices focus on the harms or costs that can also arise from ecological processes.

This does not mean that nature is “bad.” It means that human and ecological systems interact in complex ways, and those interactions can produce both positive and negative outcomes.

Common examples

Some of the most discussed ecosystem disservices include agricultural pests, allergens, wildfire spread, flooding, zoonotic diseases, and damage caused by invasive species. In cities, examples can include messy fruit drop, aggressive birds, root damage to infrastructure, or mosquito breeding in poorly managed green areas.

These effects can vary by place and season, which is why disservices are often context-dependent rather than universal. A tree that provides shade and cooling in one setting may also create maintenance issues or allergies in another.

Why they matter

Ecosystem disservices matter because they influence how people perceive nature and how they support environmental policy. If negative impacts are ignored, projects may face public resistance or fail to deliver balanced outcomes.

They are especially relevant in urban planning, where green infrastructure is expected to provide many benefits but can also create trade-offs. Recognizing disservices helps planners design greener spaces that are safer, more functional, and better maintained.

Policy and research value

The concept is useful because it encourages a more realistic view of human-nature interactions. Researchers and policymakers can use it to identify risks, improve mitigation strategies, and avoid oversimplifying nature as always beneficial.

At the same time, some scholars argue that the term can be misleading if it suggests that nature itself is harmful rather than that certain ecological effects create costs for people. That debate shows why careful framing matters when discussing the social effects of ecosystems.

Why the concept is useful

Ecosystem disservices do not cancel out ecosystem services. Instead, they show that environmental management requires balance, context, and evidence.

In practice, this means planning for both benefits and risks. Healthy ecosystem management should aim to maximize services such as cooling, water regulation, and biodiversity while reducing harms such as pests, flooding, and disease exposure.

Ecosystem services are the direct and indirect benefits that ecosystems provide to people. They include the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the natural processes that help keep climate, soils, and biodiversity functioning.

What Ecosystem Services Mean

Ecosystem services describe the ways nature supports human life and well-being. The concept helps show that forests, wetlands, rivers, soils, oceans, and wildlife are not only “natural features,” but active systems that deliver valuable services every day.

This idea is useful because many of these benefits are easy to overlook until they are lost. For example, clean water, pollination, flood protection, and soil fertility often depend on healthy ecosystems.

The Four Main Types

Ecosystem services are usually grouped into four categories: provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services. Provisioning services are the material goods we take from ecosystems, such as food, timber, fiber, fuel, and fresh water.

Regulating services are the benefits gained from ecosystem processes that control natural conditions, including climate regulation, carbon storage, flood control, erosion control, air purification, and water filtration. Cultural services are the non-material benefits people receive from nature, such as recreation, tourism, aesthetic enjoyment, spiritual value, and inspiration. Supporting services are the underlying processes that make the other three possible, including soil formation, nutrient cycling, habitat provision, and primary production.

Why They Matter

Ecosystem services matter because they support almost every aspect of human well-being and the economy. Agriculture depends on pollination, fertile soil, and water regulation; cities depend on green spaces, flood protection, and heat reduction; and public health benefits from cleaner air, cleaner water, and better recreation opportunities.

They also matter because replacing these services artificially can be extremely expensive or impossible. Healthy ecosystems often provide the same benefits more efficiently and with more co-benefits than built infrastructure alone.

Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity

Biodiversity is the foundation of ecosystem services because diverse species and habitats make ecosystems more resilient and productive. When biodiversity declines, ecosystems often become less able to provide stable services such as pollination, pest control, carbon storage, and water purification.

That is why conservation is not only about protecting wildlife for its own sake. It is also about protecting the natural systems that support food security, climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and human health.

Real-World Examples

A forest provides timber, fuel, and recreation, while also storing carbon and regulating water flow. A wetland can filter pollutants, reduce floods, and provide habitat for birds and fish. Urban trees can cool neighborhoods, improve air quality, and make public spaces more livable.

These examples show that ecosystem services are not abstract environmental concepts. They are everyday benefits that affect how people live, work, eat, travel, and recover from climate stress.

Why the Concept Is Important

The idea of ecosystem services helps governments, planners, businesses, and communities make better decisions. By recognizing the value of nature’s contributions, they can compare development options more realistically and avoid costly environmental damage.

It also encourages a more balanced view of progress. Instead of treating nature as separate from the economy, ecosystem services show that environmental protection and human prosperity are closely linked.

Natural capital is the stock of natural assets that provide people with essential goods and life-supporting services. It includes soil, air, water, minerals, plants, animals, and ecosystems, all of which sustain human health, livelihoods, and economic activity.

What Natural Capital Means

Natural capital is a way of describing nature in terms of assets and the benefits they generate. Just as financial capital can produce income, natural capital produces a flow of services such as clean water, food, climate regulation, flood protection, and raw materials.

This concept helps explain that nature is not an unlimited resource. When ecosystems are damaged or overused, the services they provide become weaker or disappear, which creates environmental, social, and economic costs.

Why It Matters

Natural capital matters because the economy depends on nature. Forests, wetlands, rivers, soils, and oceans support agriculture, energy, transport, construction, health, and many other sectors.

It also matters because many of nature’s benefits are not reflected in market prices. Clean air, pollination, storm protection, and water purification are often taken for granted, even though replacing them artificially would be expensive or impossible.

Main Components

Natural capital includes both visible and less visible parts of nature. The visible components are land, water, forests, wildlife, and minerals, while the less visible components are ecological processes such as nutrient cycling, carbon storage, and pollination.

These components work together to create ecosystem services. For example, wetlands store water and reduce flooding, forests store carbon and support biodiversity, and healthy soils support food production and water retention.

Natural Capital and Economy

The natural capital approach is important in policy and planning because it gives decision-makers a clearer picture of what is gained or lost when land or ecosystems are altered. It can help governments, businesses, and communities compare short-term development gains with long-term environmental costs.

This is especially relevant in climate and biodiversity policy. The European Investment Bank and the Convention on Biological Diversity both emphasize that natural capital underpins resilience, economic stability, and human well-being.

Why It Is Under Pressure

Natural capital is under pressure from pollution, land conversion, deforestation, overfishing, climate change, and habitat loss. When these pressures accumulate, ecosystems become less productive and less resilient, which weakens the services people depend on.

The problem is not only ecological but also economic. If natural systems decline, societies may face higher costs for water treatment, flood control, food production, health protection, and infrastructure replacement.

Why the Concept Is Useful

Natural capital is useful because it helps people see nature as a foundation for prosperity rather than as a separate environmental concern. It encourages better planning, smarter investment, and more realistic accounting of environmental value.

In practice, this can support conservation, ecosystem restoration, sustainable agriculture, climate adaptation, and urban design. It is a simple idea with a strong message: protecting nature is not just about preservation, but also about maintaining the systems that make life and economies possible.

It aims to: – Communicate the knowledge and applications of ecosystem services and values to decision-makers at all levels and to the general public, thus building local and political support and convinced (potential) donors that the benefits of conserving, restoring, and sustainably using ecosystems usually exceed the costs. This system is “based on the twin principles that those who benefit from environmental services should pay for the service, and that those who provide the environmental services should be compensated for this.” An example of this is the reforestation campaign in Costa Rica (since 1996)—PSA (Payment for Environmental Services), where the forest area lost between 1950 and 1995 from 50% to 25% of the country’s area was financed with such incentives to reforest or protect over 8% of the national territory; the payments were made on categories of services: biodiversity preservation, water services, carbon services (sequestration), and landscape (cultural ecosystem services). Other large-scale examples include the Chinese Grain for Green program (1999, to discourage deforestation for agricultural crops) and the American Dust Bowl program, against crops on eroded land.

Through the MAES mapping effort, a series of reports (five until January 2018) and other supporting framework documents have been published for the authorities and citizens of the Member States, as well as for European forums whose concerns interact with ecosystems and the use of natural resources. Among these, particularly interesting for the built environment is Report 4 – Urban Ecosystems (May 2016), a framework document for indicators to be used in connection with the subject addressed, because it refers directly to environments where the human-nature report is particularly one in terms of high weight of spatial occupancy, very high in terms of the use of ecosystem services but very limited in terms of preserving healthy spaces, including for people, and very unbalanced compared to the potential for responsible use of materials and technologies that are neither efficient, nor sustainable, nor resilient.

The Urban Ecosystems report, supervised by MAES, is the result of a coordinated effort of JRC (Joint Research Centre) and RIVM—the Dutch Institute for Public Health and Environment, with the support of the Portuguese Territorial Directorate, the European Commission, and EEA. The presented conclusions and data are based on information from case studies and support from cities such as Barcelona, Cascais, Lisbon, Oieras, Olso, Padua, Poznan, Rome, Trent, and Utrecht, as well as from a workshop and a survey in 42 cities, among researchers, NGO representatives, and local authorities. The case studies and the presence of experts, along with examples of best practices and particular local conclusions, offered expertise in selecting a framework of indicators and tools for mapping and analyzing urban ecosystems, their actual conditions, and ecosystem services. For 2020, an MAES Urban pilot is planned, for which this report is supporting material, and from testing it in as many cities as possible, conclusions will be drawn regarding the effectiveness of using the methodology of measuring (the actual state and ecosystem services) as relevant tools for green urban infrastructure and nature-based solutions (NBS).

The document departs from the premise that “urban ecosystems or cities are defined here as socio-ecological systems composed of green infrastructure (ecological) and built infrastructure.”

Green urban infrastructure (GI) is understood in this report as the multifunctional network of green spaces in the urban environment located within the limits of the urban ecosystem. Green spaces in the urban environment represent the structural components of urban GI.

The report does not take into account, not even as an example, elements that would have been useful for inclusion as additional categories, such as advanced research biotopic elements, networks (designed) of mycelia, mosses, or lichens, urban algae containers, or biotechnological microcellular elements. The insertion of a category of hybrid elements, possibly even biomimetic, which take mechanisms from nature and augment the provision of certain ecosystem services—such as artificial trees, green buses, or living vegetal sculptures or organic collectors/purifiers (which utilize certain bacteria for purifying air, soil, or water).

Instead, the report focuses on results or classifications from European projects like GreenSurge, GreenUrbs, or Urbes, which is why the report can be considered less innovative and more centralized-generalist, focusing on classical vegetation.

It gives important attention to the architectural finishing elements (walls, roofs) without detailing these sub-categories, except through examples from the studied cities.

Another representative Romanian project is ValueEcoServ, carried out by the National Center for Sustainable Development, at the request of the Romanian Academy.

Intermediate reports have already been published and approved in plenary sessions (for example, the first thematic assessment on pollinators, pollination, and food production). Assessments are either thematic and specific areas, or methodological, both regionally and globally. Additionally, areas of interest include support for relevant policies, capacity building, and knowledge development for member states, experts, member states, and interested parties, as well as maximizing the impact of the provided data.

Two documents of specific interest for the current study theme, from this global panel, are: “Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for Europe and Central Asia” (with chapters and summary for the policy-making factors, approved in the IPBES plenary session in March 2018), and “Assessment Report on Scenarios and Models of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services” (published in 2016).

The entire IPBES undertaking involves updating data on ecosystem services and biodiversity. The assessment for Europe and Central Asia signals that the main negative factors are land-use change, but even more so, increasing climate change; meanwhile, it focuses on predictions for 2020-2050 and proposes scenarios for public policy, management, and governance to reduce biodiversity loss and the benefits from nature.

According to the official website description, “The System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) is a framework that integrates economic and environmental data to provide a more comprehensive and multiple view of the relationship between the economy and the surrounding environment, the stocks and changes in environmental assets, and benefits for humanity. It contains the concepts, definitions, classifications, accounting rules, and standard international tables designed to produce comparable international statistics and accounts. The SEEA framework follows an accounting structure similar to the System of National Accounts (SNA). The framework uses concepts, definitions, and classifications compatible with SNA to facilitate the integration of environmental and economic statistics. SEEA is a multi-functional system that generates a wide range of statistics, accounts, and indicators with many potential analytical applications. It is a flexible system that can be adapted to the political priorities and needs of the countries, ensuring at the same time a common framework, concepts, terms, and definitions.”

SEEA is a system that generates a wide range of statistics, accounts, and indicators. It is a flexible system that can be adapted to the political priorities and needs of the countries, while ensuring a common framework, concepts, terms, and definitions.

The core concept emphasizes that SEEA allows the elaboration of indicators and the analysis of the link between the economy and the environment, and “facilitates better-informed decision-making. The accounts system offers a means to monitor the pressures exerted by the economy on the environment and can help explore how the economy and society respond regarding environmental protection and resource management expenditures. SEEA does not propose specific indicators, but rather a multifunctional holistic information system that can generate a wide range of statistics and indicators with various potential analytical applications.”

Partha Dasgupta, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Cambridge, presents SEEA as simply the new “normal” economy system, which finally takes into account a more detailed contribution of the surrounding environment, of natural capital, which we are used to taking for granted, a “asset” with zero cost (compared to the old one which counted, for example, roads, constructions, calculators, and nature only by products—wood, fish). In his opinion, nature is part of the production structure and it is necessary to give “approximate values where there were none before, values as accurate as possible,” to include not only tangible services but also the “many intangible, hidden, possibly unobservable, but which exist and which we use without being aware that they carry a value, a value that is often omitted from the economic balance sheet of the owner, of the private environment, or of the governments.” An example is knowing the value when nature decomposes waste and residues by microorganisms, reducing pollution, detoxifying, and separating dangerous elements for man into primary materials/elements returning them naturally to the nutrient or sedimentary cycle, etc., or to better measure the real cost of a pesticide, which when used destroys these microorganisms.

SEEA focuses on methodologies, capacity building, and coordination, and supporting these are a series of framework publications, the most notable being under the joint aegis of the UN, the European Commission, OECD, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Methodologically, this system is based on three parts: first, the SEEA Central Framework, the document adopted by the UN Statistical Commission as the first international standard for ecological-economic accounting in 2012 and published in its final version in February 2014, building on older projects (SEEA-2003 and SEEA-1993), and being an endeavor characterized by constant multi-year revisions, covering 3 main domains: 1. Environmental flows (the flow of natural, produced, and residual inputs between the surrounding environment and the economy and within the economy, both in physical and monetary terms); 2. Environmental asset stocks (individual, such as water or energy assets, and how these change over a reporting period, due to economic activity and natural processes, both in physical and monetary terms); and 3. Economic activity related to the environment (monetary flows associated with economic activities related to the environment, including expenditures for environmental protection and resource management, as well as the production of “environmental goods and services”).

The Central Framework is completed by the SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting, which highlights a synthesis of current knowledge in the field of ecosystem accounting and “follows the changes in ecosystems and links these changes to economic activity and other human activities.”

Finally, a series of other materials known as SEEA Applications and Extensions complete the SEEA database with examples showing “how the information can be utilized in decision-making, policy revision, and formulation,” alongside dedicated subsystems for specific sectors such as water, energy, sustainable development, and the green economy, sub-domains for which there are additional specialized resources, facilitating links between accounting experts and niche specialists, “in terms of terminology, concepts, clarifications, and reporting.”

SEEA follows a flexible and modular implementation strategy in the states that have joined the system, recommending members to implement accounts of personal relevance, as well as global assessments (the latest in 2017) or guidelines and diagnostic tools. The system also offers a package of e-learning courses, part of an extended UNSTAT package, for those who wish to specialize in the field.

SEEA is also based on information, data, or knowledge obtained through the efforts of TEEB, WAVES, etc., and is correlated with CICES – the International Classification of Ecosystem Services.

MAES emerged as a harmonization tool in the approach to ecosystems and the evaluation of the services provided by them, among Member States, whose efforts were—and are—at different stages of development and based on distinct reference systems.

This unified conceptual framework is based on the initial MA (2005) and TEEB classification, but at the same time, it is part of the component and compliant with the guidelines set by the EU Strategy for Biodiversity for 2020, which “aims to inform policy decision-makers and the implementation of policies in numerous domains that depend on ecosystems and their services. Some European countries have started TEEB studies on countries and might rely on them when fulfilling their obligations regarding Action 5, others may choose to extend mapping and valuation of value more.” Associated with fulfilling the Strategy objectives, MAES critically analyzes updated information to provide a clear picture to policymakers regarding policies both concerning specific ecosystems (aquatic, terrestrial, agricultural) and concerning territorial development.

The key novelty is the mapping, promoting the utility of maps in “the explicit spatial prioritization and identification of problems, especially concerning the synergies and compromises between different ecosystem services and between ecosystem services and biodiversity,” and “as a communication tool to initiate discussions with stakeholders, to visualize the locations where valuable ecosystem services are produced or used, and to explain the relevance of ecosystem services to the public in their territory.”

MAES compiles a series of extremely useful applications, such as a European atlas of ecosystems and their services, along with case studies, which can constitute a basis for the hypothesis of the current study in which built infrastructure in a given location can acquire “ecosystematizing” characteristics that make it cancel negative effects on the ecosystem that it alters with its presence, and the effects of its presence in the medium and long term.

The atlas is updated and completed as new studies deepen, analyze, and detail habitats, ecosystems, and services, with the perspective of being developed according to the planning for 2020.

The lack of information for a given location can be supplemented where similar ecosystems, both as biotopes and in terms of biome, present similar data, so that there is the possibility of replicating the mapping in similar points across the continent.

Another application linked to MAES is the Ecosystem Services Partnership’s Visualization Tool. The online platform offers the possibility of sharing data, maps, mapping methods, etc. Case studies from Member States complete the MAES database, along with indicators and specific disciplinary references for evaluation, such as Corine Land Cover classes, the Eionet projects regarding natural capital accounting, or satellite data from Copernicus, the EU Urban Atlas—the descriptions of which are not less important for the finality of this academic endeavor.

Although MAES activities focus specifically on biodiversity and its utility to the fields of biology and geography, the necessary information can be extracted for the theory that the provision of ecosystem services can be “borrowed” by built infrastructure, a theory that can be based on the EUNIS habitat classification, Category I – Domestic habitats and J – Artificial habitats.

In the last decade, including the present, many studies and projects have been carried out with different types of financing, with the goal of promoting more inclusive and sustainable use of natural capital. The consideration of local specifics and the involved population, service types and flows, is promoted: “The precise composition of conservation and development objectives must take into account the concerns generated locally and not result from a one-size-fits-all approach. There is potential for substantial expansion of PES at the international level, but these opportunities should be analyzed alongside other natural resource management tools and poverty reduction. Such programs should be subjected to tests with/without policy analyses in a way that concretizes the causal links between intervention options, ES flows, and proxy measures for ES in the field and the results of the programs. PES programs should not necessarily be considered superior to other intervention options or a panacea to be implemented blindly.”

Although the goal of this system is ultimately environmental conservation, it has major social implications. PES schemes, while not oriented towards poor populations, can be a factor of well-being for them, as surplus income, in addition to the fact that in many cases, a person who is today paid to guard a forest, yesterday would have maintained it by stealing wood from the forest. The Pro-poor PES system maximizes the positive impact on the beneficiary population and keeps the negative impact at minimum levels.

According to the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), “payments for environmental services (also called ecosystem services payments or PES) represent payments to farmers or landowners who have agreed to undertake certain actions to manage their lands or river basins to provide an ecological service. Since payments provide incentives to owners and managers of land (agricultural, forestry, etc.) or indirectly to those who work the land or who produce crops (agricultural, usually). However, there is potential for scaling up the categories to which PES is addressed. Within a balanced balance between investment and benefits, the built environment could “borrow” from the natural capital offer, either as supporting base (rooftop gardens or parks, green facades, etc.), or through technology (biomimetics, which imitate processes in nature and offer similar chemo-physical results), and this new attribute of the built infrastructure can be monetized with advantages for all parties, including nature that gave up the physical place where the new construction appeared), through similar schemes.

The UNDP describes the stages of preparing a PES system, including “negotiating agreements, legal structure, financing and implementation”: 1. Identifying ecosystem services and geographic boundaries; 2. Identifying sellers/providers and buyers/beneficiaries; 3. Defining the market and the price; 4. Determining governance, institutional, and legal arrangements; 5. Collecting basic data on biophysical data for the monitoring system.

Through WAVES, it is proposed to complete the measurement of a country’s wealth by incorporating the term natural capital, alongside the classical notion of financial income, including services (not just private goods), because this way, the sustainability of the state’s development can be predicted more realistically and over a longer term. This is interesting because by introducing resource consumption as an economic indicator, it can reveal how future generations will no longer benefit from the same quantity of respective resources, and thus there is the possibility that they will be poorer. The challenge is thus clearer: how to grow a country’s wealth without consuming natural reserves.

One of the aspects motivating the WAVES initiative is the fact that a portion of the services provided by nature are not all (or well) represented in the GDP. An example is forests, which are included in the GDP through products derived from the wood industry, but not the service of carbon sequestration (and thus unmeasurable, including the medium-term impact of CO2 trapping) or the action and impact of air filtering, with indirect impact on the health of the entire trophic chain, including local human beneficiary communities.

From an institutional point of view, WAVES involves central banks and national ministries of economy or development, for more realistic planning of investments, and changes in the use of land and existing ecosystems.

Additionally, implementing a natural capital accounting system based on the SEEA system in the pilot countries, the partnership also aims to integrate this type of economy into policy analyses and planning, and to develop guidelines for standardizing ecosystem services and adopting natural capital economics on a global scale.

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.

The study, designed in three phases, was launched by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMUB) and the European Commission (EC) and conducted by Pavan Sukhdev between 2008–2011. Sukhdev stated that “the services ecosystems provide, most of these services are provided free. The challenge of the economical invisibility of nature comes exactly because of that. We use nature because she’s valuable and we lose nature because she’s free.”

Phase 1, completed in 2008, with the publication of an interim report titled with the initiative, which defines ecosystem services as “the direct and indirect contributions of ecosystems to human well-being. The concept of “ecosystem goods and services” is synonymous with ecosystem services.”

The report continued in Phase 2 (2010) with 5 TEEB framework documents, detailing initial aspects, providing answers to raised questions, and solutions in key areas: the ecological and economic foundations (dealing with fundamental concepts and state-of-the-art methodologies for the economic valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services); the development of national and international policies (analyses and guidelines on the method of valuing and internalizing the values of biodiversity and ecosystems in policy decisions); local and regional policy (analyses and guidelines for integrating biodiversity and ecosystem values at the regional and local level, exemplified by case studies); and business and industry (analyses and guidelines on how enterprises and companies can identify and manage the risks and opportunities related to biodiversity and ecosystems), followed by a synthesis report offering useful policy recommendations for integrating the economy of nature into the decision-making process.

Phase 3 is still ongoing through UNEP, focusing on the application of the TEEB approach in policy implementation and in real-life case studies in 5 developing countries, as well as TEEB studies in various other nations. The TEEB portal aggregates these reports, ordered by country, sector, and biome, and its data library is constantly improving.

The studies follow the principles of the approach, which are: 1. Recognizing value in ecosystems, landscapes, species, and other aspects of biodiversity is a feature of all human societies and communities and is sometimes sufficient to ensure conservation and sustainable use. For example, the existence of sacred groves in some cultures has helped to protect natural areas and the biodiversity they contain. 2. Demonstrating value in economic terms is often useful for policymakers and others such as business in reaching decisions that consider the full costs and benefits of an ecosystem rather than just those costs or values that enter the markets in the form of private goods. An example would include calculating the costs and benefits of conserving the ecosystem services provided by wetlands in controlling floods compared to building flood defenses. The demonstration of an economic value even though it does not result in specific measures is an important aid in achieving efficient use of natural resources. 3. Capturing value involves the introduction of mechanisms that incorporate the values of ecosystems into decision-making through incentives and price signals. This can include payments for ecosystem services, reforming environmentally harmful subsidies or introducing tax breaks for conservation.

This evaluation involved over 1360 researchers from 95 countries worldwide and drew attention to multiple global considerations regarding the necessity of balancing the satisfaction of human needs from natural sources with the minimization of the costs and negative effects of degrading the ecosystems that support these needs, as well as stopping the irreversible loss of biodiversity. The reports and materials produced by the scientific community during this program represent today the historical framework for most evaluations in the field.

The official definition and an initial categorization were expressed in the report “Ecosystems and Human Well-being – A Framework for Assessment” (September 2003), stating: “Ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems. These include provisioning services such as food and water; regulating services such as regulation of floods, drought, land degradation, and disease; supporting services such as soil formation and nutrient cycling; and cultural services such as recreational, spiritual, religious and other nonmaterial benefits.”

Subsequent definitions supplement this by noting: “the important benefits for human beings that arise from healthily functioning ecosystems, notably production of oxygen, soil genesis, and water detoxification,” and “ecosystem services represent the direct and indirect contribution of ecosystems to human well-being.”

Global and European projects and initiatives continue to refine the methodology for evaluating ecosystem services, strongly linked to natural capital and their effects on human society’s development, ensuring better coordination with the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDGs), replacing the MEA’s correlation with the UN Millenium Development Goals, which were replaced by SDGs at the Paris Conference in 2015. The data used and the scenarios proposed in this thesis are based on the following contemporary programs (TEEB, IPBES, CICES, MAES, WAVES, SEAS, IUCN-CEM-ES, SGAN, ESP, etc.), which, although not fully finalized at the time of the study, already offered working deliverables, particularly the European evaluation framework, MAES. Furthermore, representative European projects include OPERAs, OpenNESS, ESMERALDA, EKLIPSE, ThinkNature, and in Romania, the MAES Romania and ValueEcoServ projects, detailed at the end of this sub-chapter.

The conferences of IUCN, held every four years, have produced extremely important results over time—such as the World Heritage Convention (within which IUCN officially advises on natural heritage) or the crucial Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), within or through which important stages of the concept of biodiversity or ecosystem services were defined or validated, for which related materials are prepared by TEEB, IPBES, SGAN, and ESP.

The general objective of the Commission on Ecosystem Management is “improving the body of knowledge on ecosystem services and their values and promoting the integration of this knowledge into planning and decision-making for the sustainable management of ecosystems,” accompanied by three specific objectives: 1. Stimulating research on the capacity and resilience of ecosystems to provide goods and services in a sustainable manner and developing tools and guidelines for practical applications and integrated assessments of ecosystem services. 2. Highlighting the importance (value) of ecosystem services for governments, communities, and corporations