​In 2024, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) reported that the global economy incurs annual losses ranging from $10 trillion to $25 trillion due to the mismanagement of interconnected crises such as biodiversity loss, climate change, and human health issues.

Source : IPBES

The PEOPLE Ecosystem Accounting project demonstrates the added value of integrating Earth Observation (EO) into SEEA-compliant ecosystem accounts. Coordinated by VITO (Belgium), with BC3 (Spain), Ecounting (Netherlands) and the University of Patras (Greece), the project focuses on producing spatially explicit accounts for ecosystem extent, condition, and services for both terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems.

A key innovation lies in linking EO-based processing workflows on the OpenEO cloud platform with the UN ARIES for SEEA data infrastructure, following FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). This interoperability enables direct use by national statistical offices (NSOs) and environmental agencies, empowering them to produce and use EO-based ecosystem accounts.

Additionally, the project tested EO-based methodologies for Global Climate Regulation accounts using datasets like CCI Biomass and ESA Carbon Monitoring.