This release is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources.
The literature review was conducted from May to July 2025. Any updates to publications made after this time period were not included. Although every effort was made to comprehensively cover literature within the scope of the review, it is possible that some relevant releases were inadvertently omitted.
Considerable effort was made to align ecosystem services found in the literature with the SEEA‑EA service categories presented in chapter 6 of the framework. However variations exist in ecosystem service types in the literature that do not fully align with the SEEA-EA categories. Similarly, valuation methods found in the literature were categorised to align with the SEEA-EA valuation method types presented in chapter 9 of the framework. However, as in the case for ecosystem services, variations exist in valuation methods in the literature that may not fully align with the SEEA-EA categories. As a result, the information presented in this research paper should be interpreted with caution. See Background Notes for additional information.
The CSO would like to acknowledge the work of Cian Coyne, who worked with the Ecosystem Accounts team on this project as part of an internship. We wish to extend our appreciation and thanks to him for his contribution to the research, analysis, and production of this release.
The CSO is also grateful to Statistics Canada and the Central Bank of Costa Rica for generously sharing their knowledge and learnings from working on ecosystem accounts.
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Introduction
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (14 January 2026) published a research paper that presents a global literature review on monetary valuation methods of ecosystem services.
The System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA) framework adopted by the United Nations Statistical Committee integrates economic and environmental data to analyse the relationships between environment and economy. One of the main aims of the SEEA-EA is to establish international statistical standards for the collection of data and compilation of ecosystem accounts, including the recording of the stocks and flows of ecosystem services, as well as tracking their changes.
Ecosystem services are defined in the SEEA-EA as the contribution of ecosystems to the generation of benefits (i.e. final outputs of an ecosystem) used by the economy and society. They are divided into the following three categories in the SEEA-EA:
• Provisioning services are ecosystem contributions that provide essential resources like food, materials, and energy to people and industries, for instance, forests supplying timber through the wood provisioning service.
• Regulating services help control environmental processes by filtering pollutants, managing physical flows, and maintaining ecological balance, such as forests purifying water, reducing flood risk and removing carbon from the atmosphere.
• Cultural services offer non-material benefits through people’s interaction with nature, including recreation, such as hiking, birdwatching, or nature-based tourism.
Following a recent amendment to Regulation (EU) No 691/2011 on environmental economic accounts, it will be mandatory for member states to report ecosystem accounts to Eurostat in line with SEEA-EA. Mandatory reporting will commence in 2026 and include accounts for seven ecosystem services (physical flow), along with ecosystem extent and condition. The monetary flow of ecosystem services and the monetary value of ecosystem assets are not included under this regulation. However, as part of the amendment, a provision was added indicating that in cooperation with Member States, the Commission shall "carry out an assessment of methodological possibilities and the feasibility of monetary valuation, possible reporting values where those values are missing and possible alternative ways of measuring for ecosystem services accounts, taking into account international standards of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting” (See Regulation (EU) No 2024/3024).
Purpose of review
Although there are currently no EU reporting requirements, there has been growing interest in measuring physical ecosystem services flows in terms of monetary values. As indicated in SEEA-EA, the primary motivation for monetary valuation is to enable the comparison of different ecosystem services and assets that are consistent with standard measures of products and assets as recorded in national accounts. This in turn has the potential to make the contributions of nature to the economy and people more visible.
Though internationally recognised, the statistical principles and recommendations for monetary valuation of ecosystem services and assets presented in chapters 8-11 of SEEA-EA have not yet been adopted as international statistical standards. Note that this is in contrast to chapters 1-7 on the accounting framework and physical accounts, which were accepted as international statistical standards in 2021. See Information Note on Ecosystem Accounting.
Monetary valuation of ecosystem services and assets is an evolving area of ecosystem accounting and in the absence of an international standard, a variety of approaches have been applied to value the benefits from ecosystem services across various agencies around the world. This paper describes the process of identifying literature on specific methods used to value ecosystem services and presents findings from the review of the literature. The search for relevant literature focused on those from National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) and those linked to NSIs.