Last week’s meeting in Brussels, Belgium marked the end of the four-year research collaboration MAIA (Mapping and Assessment for Integrated ecosystem Accounting). On 20 and 21 September 2022 representatives of all partner institutions gathered at the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO) to celebrate the project achievements over the course of a fruitful research collaboration.

In the span of two days, the final meeting was divided into three thematic sessions with 20 presentations in total. Along with the MAIA consortium members, key stakeholders attended the event, including representatives of the European Research Executive Agency (EC REA), United Nations Statistic Division (UNSD) and EUROSTAT. The sessions reviewed the outcomes of MAIA’s scientific innovations in support of the System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA), implementation methods, as well as policy applications for the different MAIA countries.

In conclusion, big steps have been made towards the achievement of MAIA specific objectives:

• Accessing policy priorities for accounting;
• Testing, piloting and mainstreaming NCA in EU Member states;
• Developing and testing innovative approaches for NCA in the European context;
• Supporting NCA in EU Member states through strong communication.

One of the main outputs of the project are the MAIA fact sheets, which showcase the current state of natural capital accounting in 10 European countries.

This may be the end of the MAIA project but the project consortium is already looking into further collaborative actions towards improving ecosystem accounting in the EU and beyond.