EGD: Ecosystem accounts, material footprints

ended

The proposed project responds to the generic call to support the development of more and better data and statistics to underpin the policies under the European Green Deal. The project consists of two separate work packages. The first work package aims at producing estimates of ecosystem accounts according to the specifications in the Commission proposal COM/2022/329 final and thus it directly addresses the activity 2.3 on ecosystem accounts of the call document. In the frame of a project supported by Eurostat (Project: 101068776 — 2021-AT-EGD — SMP-ESS-2021-EGD-IBA) Austria has taken the first steps to develop methodologies for the compilation of ecosystem accounts. Several remaining challenges related to the temporal and spatial resolution as well as to the consistency with other policy relevant spatial data sets were identified, which the first work package of this project shall tackle. Improved ecosystem accounts will be compiled for two different reference years, ideally 2018 and 2021, and first attempt to compile data for the conversion matrix will be made. The second work package addresses the activity 2.5 aiming at improving national estimates of material footprints (raw material consumption) and raw material equivalents, which are reported in the Eurostat Economy-wide Material Flow accounts questionnaire. The existing national tool for the calculation of raw material equivalents will be updated and improved. The results produced by the national tool shall be compared with the results calculated by Eurostat’s RME tool.