The European Environment Agency (EEA) can adapt its existing accounting framework and resulting experimental accounts and extend coverage to these ecosystems  by developing and testing a concept, analytical framework and methodology for coastal ecosystem capital accounting. The final aim of this work is to contribute to the United Nations (UN) process on ecosystem accounting (as part of EEA support) as well as to support others working on this issue (e.g. implementation of Target 2/Action 5 of the EU 2020 Biodiversity Strategy).

Ecologic's previous work focused on physical accounts of coastal land cover and associated biotopes - with a view of progressively extending the approach to coastal waters and eventually to marine waters ("marine" component).

Work in 2013 should lead to improving the concept, analytical framework and methodology for coastal ecosystem capital accounting, including test case studies.

The work should be phased to deliver, first, the basic accounts and, second, their application in a policy-relevant context at the European level. The continuation of this work is seen as a direct 2020 contribution to WG Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystem Services (MAES) of the EU 2020 Biodiversity Strategy Common Implementation Framework and the global developments (e.g. UN), in line with the EEA project plan on "Ecosystem assessments".