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Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) is becoming a reference tool for an increasing number of organizations transitioning towards environmental impact neutrality. However, one NCA technique applicable to all types of actors (individual, community, company, etc.) is missing because of the lack of consensus on how to quantify both their environmental impacts and dependencies on ecosystems. A coupled systematic and non-systematic review of the grey and scientific literature is performed here to (i) make an extensive review of state-of-the-art NCA methods, identifying their current utilization and limitations, and (ii) discern prospects about the challenges of integrating an Ecosystem Service Accounting in Life Cycle Assessment (ESA-LCA). While NCA methods can extensively evaluate the supply of ES, they tend to disregard the quantification of environmental impacts that imply a demand for ES. The ESA-LCA approach is identified as a robust solution to balance supply and demand of ecosystem services in NCA, allowing private and public actors to quantify their distance from impact neutrality targets. A novel definition of NC(A) in LCA is also formulated to support these future efforts, promoting a Mitigation Hierarchy-based strategy to avoid, minimize, restore, and offset impacts, and outlining a roadmap for practitioners to apply ESA-LCA across multiple economic sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are becoming popular in urban planning and policy making as cost-effective solutions capable of delivering multiple ecosystem services and addressing several societal challenges. So far, however, the cost-effectiveness of urban NBS projects has not been consistently quantified by built environment professionals, who lack user-friendly tools to account for the environmental costs and benefits of NBS. This paper presents a prototype online decision support tool (NBenefit$®) that calculates the negative and positive environmental impacts, externalities, and financial values of planned urban forests over their entire life cycle. NBenefit$ relies on a modelling framework that combines system dynamics, urban ecology, and life cycle thinking approaches, and it is presented as a visual web-based interface. An online map and a grid of cells is used to map the site of intervention, to delineate the size of the urban forest, and to define variations in abiotic, biotic, and management attributes in each site. Outputs are provided by year, for the entire site and NBS life cycle. The potential value of NBenefit$ as a supporting tool was exemplified with the calculation of 48 urban forest archetypes, a few of which were used to set scenarios for a hypothetical urban forest in Madrid (Spain). The results showcase the impact that decisions taken during the planning, design, or management of an NBS project may have on its long-term performance. Future works will expand the scope of NBenefit$, including other types of urban NBS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of life cycle assessment (LCA) allows work to go beyond the traditional scope of urban nature-based solutions (NBS), in which ecosystem services are provided to citizens, to include environmental impacts generated over the entire life cycle of the NBS, i.e., from raw material extraction, through materials processing, production, distribution, and use stages, to end-of-life management. In this work, we explored how LCA has been applied in the context of NBS through a critical analysis of the literature. Systems under review were not restricted to one typology of NBS or another, but were meant to cover a broad range of NBS, from NBS on the ground, water-related NBS, building NBS, to NBS strategies. In total, 130 LCA studies of NBS were analysed according to several criteria derived from the LCA methodology or from specific challenges associated with NBS. Results show that studies were based on different scopes, resulting in the selection of different functional units and system boundaries. Accordingly, we propose an innovative approach based on the ecosystem services (ES) concept to classify and quantify these functional units. We also identify and discuss two recent and promising approaches to solve multifunctionality that could be adapted for LCA of NBS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, great emphasis is placed on the relationship between forest and water because forests are considered as substantial sources of many water ecosystem services. The aim of this paper is to analyze the stakeholder opinions towards the relationship between forests and water and the potential development of water-related payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes. The study is developed in the context of COST Action CA15206–PESFOR-W (Forests for Water) aimed at synthesizing current knowledge about the PES schemes across Europe. The stakeholder opinions were mapped out using a structured questionnaire consisting of 20 questions divided into four thematic sections. The data were collected through an online survey. The results showed opinions of 142 stakeholders from 23 countries, mainly from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. In order to analyze the collected data, the stakeholders were grouped in buyers, sellers, intermediaries, and knowledge providers. The survey results indicated that the most important category of water ecosystem services according to our sample of stakeholders is regulating services followed by provisioning services. Further findings pointed out the highest importance that shared values and direct changes in land management can have when designing water-related PES schemes. The role of public authorities and collective collaboration of different stakeholders, with emphasis on local and expert knowledge, are also identified as of crucial importance. The results show that stakeholder opinions can serve as a starting point when designing PES schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanisation poses new and complex sustainability challenges. Socio-economic activities drive material and energy flows in cities that influence the health of ecosystems inside and outside the urban system. Recent studies suggest that these flows, under the urban metabolism (UM) metaphor, can be extended to encompass the assessment of urban ecosystem services (UES). Advancing UM approaches to assess UES may be a valuable solution to these arising sustainability challenges, which can support urban planning decisions. This paper critically reviews UM literature related to the UES concept and identifies approaches that may allow or improve the assessment of UES within UM frameworks. We selected from the UM literature 42 studies that encompass UES aspects, and analysed them on the following key investigation themes: temporal information, spatial information, system boundary aspects and cross-scale indicators. The analysis showed that UES are rarely acknowledged in UM literature, and that existing UM approaches have limited capacity to capture the complexity of spatio-temporal and multi-scale information underpinning UES, which has hampered the implementation of operational decision support systems so far. We use these results to identify and illustrate pathways towards a UM-UES modelling approach. Our review suggests that cause–effect dynamics should be integrated with the UM framework, based on spatially-specific social, economic and ecological data. System dynamics can inform on the causal relationships underpinning UES in cities and, therefore, can help moving towards a knowledge base tool to support urban planners in addressing urban challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]