The EU economy's dependency on nature
→ DG ENV submitted a policy request to the EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity (KCBD) to produce an estimate of the EU economy's dependency on nature by carrying out a similar analysis to that developed by PricewaterhouseCoopers with the World Economic Forum in 2020. This work was carried out by JRC.B1 and JRC.D6.
→ The study combines the use of the ENCORE (Exploring Natural Capital Opportunities, Risks and Exposure) framework and of an input-output model to produce a “high-level” estimate of the dependencies of all economic sectors on ecosystem services, outlining the assumptions made.
→ Depending on the version of ENCORE used and on some other assumptions, between 19% and 36% of the EU’s gross value added (GVA) is found to be highly dependent on ecosystem services. The analysis further shows that the entire economy is susceptible to nature degradation, since all sectors are interconnected via supply and customer links.
→ The approach is a possible entry point for more advanced analysis, which might also use regional geospatial data on ecosystem services or scenarios.
HIRSCHBUEHL Dominik;
PETRACCO Marco;
NEUVILLE Aude;
SANCHEZ ARJONA Irene;
VASILAKOPOULOS Paris;
European Commission: Joint Research Centre, HIRSCHBUEHL, D., PETRACCO, M., NEUVILLE, A. and SANCHEZ ARJONA, I., The EU economy`s dependency on nature, VASILAKOPOULOS, P. editor(s), European Commission, Ispra, 2025, JRC140003.
2025-02-28
European Commission
JRC140003
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