ABSTRACT
CoORdination of Information on the Environment (CORINE) Land Cover (CLC) data can be used in many domains, principally for assessing the environment and its relation to human activities. The development of CLC has indeed made possible the development of ecosystem accounts. The first update of CLC has been followed by the publication by the European Environment Agency (EEA) of land accounts for Europe 1990-2000 (HainesYoung, 2006) and the launch of a project of simplified ecosystem capital accounts in 2010. In 2013, the United Nations (jointly with the European Commission, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the World Bank) edited a manual called System of Environmental-Economic Accounting 2012, Experimental Ecosystem Accounting that states that “For ecosystem accounting purposes, the economic territory is disaggregated into spatial units […]. These spatial units form a focus for ecosystem accounting performing a similar role to economic units (such as enterprises, households and governments) in national accounting” (SEEA-EEA, 2013, paragraph 1.27). The technical guidelines published in 2014 by the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity put the SEEA-EEA broad recommendations to work and achieve their target on “Integration of Biodiversity Values in National Accounting Systems.” The guidelines provide detailed
CONTENTS
23.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................225 23.2 LC Mapping and the Development of Ecosystem Accounting: A Historical
Reminder ............................................................................................................................. 226 23.3 Land Ecosystem Accounting: A Follow-Up in Space and Time .................................228 23.4 LEAC: The European Framework.................................................................................... 229 23.5 LC in Ecosystem Natural Capital Accounting ............................................................... 232
23.5.1 Objectives of ENCA ............................................................................................... 232 23.5.2 From Mapping LC to Accounting for Ecosystem Degradation
and Ecological Debts ............................................................................................. 232 23.5.3 Specific Role of LC Data in Ecosystem Natural Capital Accounting .............233
23.6 Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................235 References .....................................................................................................................................236
references to the use of land cover (LC) data and contain a full chapter on LC accounting (Weber, 2014a).
