Ecosystem Services
Valuation Database
Netherlands, South-America, Africa | Agriculture, wetlands and forests, quality improvement, updating the ESVD | Status: Finished May 2023
LNV 2022-2023
Making nature count: Updating and improving the ESVD
This project aims to further improve the data management system and the quality control process, in addition to an ESVD update with data relevant for the Dutch financial sector. Finally, this follow-up project will help to align the ESVD with other methodologies such as ENCORE (Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks and Exposure), the Partnership for Biodiversity Accounting Financials (PBAF), the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and the Biodiversity Footprint for Financial Institutions (BFFI). This follows from the expressed needs from a great variety of stakeholders within the financial sector for more (reviewed) data, and the integration of this data in an online tool (esvd.net).
The three main activities that have been carried out to achieve these goals are:
-
Online data management system: Further alignment of the workflow and preparing integration with the online-interface (www.esvd.net).
-
Data quality management: Systemic improvement of the data quality through developing biome review groups (BRG) in collaboration with the ES Partnership and further integration of ES classifications into the ESVD.
-
Data updates: Continuous updating of the ESVD throughout the project with 800 new monetary values for ecosystem services.
Involved user groups and ESVD applications
In this project we aim to show the benefits of using the ecosystem services approach to take the 'full' value of ecosystems into account, specifically, with a focus on South-America and Africa. We are targeting the following user groups through the following ESVD applications:
Governments
The usefulness of spatial ecosystem services values was recognized by LNV. The ESVD update can assist LNV in their decision-making process by highlighting the importance of nature. This will happen by a data update and improved functionalities.