The science of ecosystem services has come of age globally. The data revolution of the last decades has allowed many experts to measure, quantify, model, and map human-nature interactions, yet to use all this information to support public and private decision-making remains a challenge.

Against this background, the Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP) is hosting for a fourth year in a row ESP Europe Regional conference, the goal of which is to highlight pathways for involving diverse societal groups in ecosystem services science, policy and practice.

The event will take place between 10 and 14 October, 2022 in Heraklion, Greece, where leading experts from all over Europe will gather to discuss the new pathways forward for empowering societies through ecosystem services. 

MAIA is proud to share that the project is going to be amongst the attendants and will also host three thematic working group sessions, which will be supported by members of the MAIA consortium:

• Ecosystem condition accounting: overcoming operational challenges, hosted by the external expert Javier Babi Almenar from the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC);

• Moving forward in ecosystem services accounting: From the monetary valuation barrier to the mainstreaming into policy making, hosted by Alessandra La Notte, JRC; and

• Biophysical models for ecosystem accounting, hosted by MAIA’s project coordinator Prof. Lars Hein from the Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

Anyone interested to be part of the group sessions is welcome to submit their abstract here 31 July, 2022. 

The full list of approved sessions you can view here.