The report presents preliminary results achieved through a two-year government interdepartmental project to develop experimental ecosystem accounts and the required statistical infrastructure. It provides an overview of ecosystem accounting and valuation, several measures of the quantity and quality of ecosystems and their goods and services, a case study for valuing EGS, and a research agenda for future work in this area.

Ecosystem goods and services (EGS) are fundamental to human activity. These tangible goods (e.g., fish, timber) and less tangible services (e.g., clean air, productive soil) are crucial to our lives and livelihoods, yet human activities can have impacts on the ecosystem structures and functions that produce them. Tracking the quantity, quality and value of EGS has never been more important.

The report closes on a research agenda describing some of the key issues that require further investigation, including improvement of spatial datasets, EGS indicators, the characterization of EGS for marine and coastal ecosystems, monetary and non-monetary valuation of EGS flows, and the identification and classification of the stock of natural capital assets and associated flows that should be included in a complete set of national ecosystem accounts.