The Forum is organized by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment), the World Bank, and the European Union through the project “Natural Capital Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services.

The Forum’s objectives are showcase relevant methodological and technical advances; advance research agenda on ecosystem accounting in support of the revision of the SEEA EEA, and share experiences and best-practices in compiling and applying ecosystem accounting including in the context of the Natural Capital Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services project.

The SEEA EEA has been recognized as the main statistical framework for ecosystem accounting in various other international and regional policy initiatives. Participants include statisticians, researchers and experts in the area of ecosystem accounting, ecosystem modelling, spatial analysis of ecosystem services, and environmental and ecological economics, as well as earth observation specialists.

There are more than 30 countries that have started piloting ecosystem accounting. Learning from the experience and building on scientific advances the Statistical Commission endorsed the revision of the SEEA EEA by 2020, with the objective of reaching a consensus on concepts and methods on ecosystem accounting building on the testing and experimentation that has been going on in the past years and learning from the experience of various initiatives working on relevant projects,

In this context, to avoid the carbon footprint, BC3 Ikerbasque researcher Ferdinando Villa has participated remotely through a 20-minute video (prerecorded) in the session 4a: Advances in biophysical modeling for ecosystem accounting.

This video is the first of a long series of dedicated video documentation of the modelling platform that will be publicly launched later this year at the ESP10 Conference: 10 years advancing ecosystem services science, policy and practice for a sustainable future that will take place in Hannover 20-25 October, 2019. https://www.espconference.org/esp10.

Ferdinando Villa Project leader, Ikerbasque Research Professor at BC3

Ferdinando Villa holds a Ph.D. in theoretical Ecology and had a long parallel career as a scientific software designer and engineer. He started out as a theoretical ecologist and had a long parallel career as a scientific software designer and engineer. After working in many fields of ecology, from theoretical island biogeography to spatially-explicit decision analysis, he discovered the joys and pains of interdisciplinary research during a 15-year stint in ecological economics at the universities of Maryland and Vermont. After moving back to his beloved Europe for a tenured position in 2010, He still find it a challenge – and a responsibility – to maintain scientific depth unaltered in face of a greatly increased breadth. His research sits at the multi-faceted interface of linguistics, computer science, social science, ecology and economics, concentrating on artificial intelligence approaches to assist environmental decision making and natural system assessment and valuation. His best known project is ARIES (Artificial Intelligence for Ecosystem Services: http://aries.integratedmodelling.org, which is producing  a next-generation web application meant to make environmental decisions easier and more effective. The ARIES project builds on a partnership of international experts, NGOs, and academics, and pairs user and expert knowledge with advanced artificial intelligence to construct a model of a case study, making sure that no relevant data or knowledge is overlooked. He also has collaborated with many international institutions and governments and authored or co-authored 150+ scientific publications. Professor Villa still spend time coding, and have authored a number of major open source software packages. He has been the recipient major research grants from the US National Science Foundation, the European Union, The UK NERC, UNEP-WCMC and other institutions and NGOs, all aiming to contribute to the science of coupled natural/human systems and to build effective technologies for decision makers that take sound science and “democratize” it by putting it at the fingertips of decision makers worldwide.

Press Contact: estibaliz.sanz@bc3reserach.org. Tfno. 94 4014690