Through the MAES mapping effort, a series of reports (five until January 2018) and other supporting framework documents have been published for the authorities and citizens of the Member States, as well as for European forums whose concerns interact with ecosystems and the use of natural resources. Among these, particularly interesting for the built environment is Report 4 – Urban Ecosystems (May 2016), a framework document for indicators to be used in connection with the subject addressed, because it refers directly to environments where the human-nature report is particularly one in terms of high weight of spatial occupancy, very high in terms of the use of ecosystem services but very limited in terms of preserving healthy spaces, including for people, and very unbalanced compared to the potential for responsible use of materials and technologies that are neither efficient, nor sustainable, nor resilient.

The Urban Ecosystems report, supervised by MAES, is the result of a coordinated effort of JRC (Joint Research Centre) and RIVM—the Dutch Institute for Public Health and Environment, with the support of the Portuguese Territorial Directorate, the European Commission, and EEA. The presented conclusions and data are based on information from case studies and support from cities such as Barcelona, Cascais, Lisbon, Oieras, Olso, Padua, Poznan, Rome, Trent, and Utrecht, as well as from a workshop and a survey in 42 cities, among researchers, NGO representatives, and local authorities. The case studies and the presence of experts, along with examples of best practices and particular local conclusions, offered expertise in selecting a framework of indicators and tools for mapping and analyzing urban ecosystems, their actual conditions, and ecosystem services. For 2020, an MAES Urban pilot is planned, for which this report is supporting material, and from testing it in as many cities as possible, conclusions will be drawn regarding the effectiveness of using the methodology of measuring (the actual state and ecosystem services) as relevant tools for green urban infrastructure and nature-based solutions (NBS).

The document departs from the premise that \”urban ecosystems or cities are defined here as socio-ecological systems composed of green infrastructure (ecological) and built infrastructure.\”

Green urban infrastructure (GI) is understood in this report as the multifunctional network of green spaces in the urban environment located within the limits of the urban ecosystem. Green spaces in the urban environment represent the structural components of urban GI.

The report does not take into account, not even as an example, elements that would have been useful for inclusion as additional categories, such as advanced research biotopic elements, networks (designed) of mycelia, mosses, or lichens, urban algae containers, or biotechnological microcellular elements. The insertion of a category of hybrid elements, possibly even biomimetic, which take mechanisms from nature and augment the provision of certain ecosystem services—such as artificial trees, green buses, or living vegetal sculptures or organic collectors/purifiers (which utilize certain bacteria for purifying air, soil, or water).

Instead, the report focuses on results or classifications from European projects like GreenSurge, GreenUrbs, or Urbes, which is why the report can be considered less innovative and more centralized-generalist, focusing on classical vegetation.

It gives important attention to the architectural finishing elements (walls, roofs) without detailing these sub-categories, except through examples from the studied cities.

Another representative Romanian project is ValueEcoServ, carried out by the National Center for Sustainable Development, at the request of the Romanian Academy.

MAES emerged as a harmonization tool in the approach to ecosystems and the evaluation of the services provided by them, among Member States, whose efforts were—and are—at different stages of development and based on distinct reference systems.

This unified conceptual framework is based on the initial MA (2005) and TEEB classification, but at the same time, it is part of the component and compliant with the guidelines set by the EU Strategy for Biodiversity for 2020, which \”aims to inform policy decision-makers and the implementation of policies in numerous domains that depend on ecosystems and their services. Some European countries have started TEEB studies on countries and might rely on them when fulfilling their obligations regarding Action 5, others may choose to extend mapping and valuation of value more.\” Associated with fulfilling the Strategy objectives, MAES critically analyzes updated information to provide a clear picture to policymakers regarding policies both concerning specific ecosystems (aquatic, terrestrial, agricultural) and concerning territorial development.

The key novelty is the mapping, promoting the utility of maps in \”the explicit spatial prioritization and identification of problems, especially concerning the synergies and compromises between different ecosystem services and between ecosystem services and biodiversity,\” and \”as a communication tool to initiate discussions with stakeholders, to visualize the locations where valuable ecosystem services are produced or used, and to explain the relevance of ecosystem services to the public in their territory.\”

MAES compiles a series of extremely useful applications, such as a European atlas of ecosystems and their services, along with case studies, which can constitute a basis for the hypothesis of the current study in which built infrastructure in a given location can acquire \”ecosystematizing\” characteristics that make it cancel negative effects on the ecosystem that it alters with its presence, and the effects of its presence in the medium and long term.

The atlas is updated and completed as new studies deepen, analyze, and detail habitats, ecosystems, and services, with the perspective of being developed according to the planning for 2020.

The lack of information for a given location can be supplemented where similar ecosystems, both as biotopes and in terms of biome, present similar data, so that there is the possibility of replicating the mapping in similar points across the continent.

Another application linked to MAES is the Ecosystem Services Partnership\’s Visualization Tool. The online platform offers the possibility of sharing data, maps, mapping methods, etc. Case studies from Member States complete the MAES database, along with indicators and specific disciplinary references for evaluation, such as Corine Land Cover classes, the Eionet projects regarding natural capital accounting, or satellite data from Copernicus, the EU Urban Atlas—the descriptions of which are not less important for the finality of this academic endeavor.

Although MAES activities focus specifically on biodiversity and its utility to the fields of biology and geography, the necessary information can be extracted for the theory that the provision of ecosystem services can be \”borrowed\” by built infrastructure, a theory that can be based on the EUNIS habitat classification, Category I – Domestic habitats and J – Artificial habitats.

The EEA is responsible for developing CICES since the beginning (the first \”working\” version being in 2013), and, being a European agency, it directly correlates with the information and data from the MAES evaluation (the next sub-chapter), the ongoing program of mapping and evaluation of ecosystem services in the European Union. Support for completing CICES was also provided through EU-funded projects such as ESMERALDA, OpenNESS, EU KIP INCA, and from the consultant Fabis Consulting. The working version for 2018 (August) is V5.1 from January 2018, and for its coherent and efficient use, an official guide is also available. CICES is used by the German NEA-DE mapping and as support for mappings in other European countries. To date, there remain semantic divergences between services, benefits, and goods, in the sense that they can overlap or derive some from others.

The CICES classification summarizes the system of organizing a possible set of architectural interfaces that offer ecosystem services. The CICES system, initiated by the EEA as support for the international environmental accounting standard SEEA, classifies from a biophysical structure or a process, to a function, to a service, to a benefit, finally arriving at (a) value.

In the last decade, including the present, many studies and projects have been carried out with different types of financing, with the goal of promoting more inclusive and sustainable use of natural capital. The consideration of local specifics and the involved population, service types and flows, is promoted: “The precise composition of conservation and development objectives must take into account the concerns generated locally and not result from a one-size-fits-all approach. There is potential for substantial expansion of PES at the international level, but these opportunities should be analyzed alongside other natural resource management tools and poverty reduction. Such programs should be subjected to tests with/without policy analyses in a way that concretizes the causal links between intervention options, ES flows, and proxy measures for ES in the field and the results of the programs. PES programs should not necessarily be considered superior to other intervention options or a panacea to be implemented blindly.”

Although the goal of this system is ultimately environmental conservation, it has major social implications. PES schemes, while not oriented towards poor populations, can be a factor of well-being for them, as surplus income, in addition to the fact that in many cases, a person who is today paid to guard a forest, yesterday would have maintained it by stealing wood from the forest. The Pro-poor PES system maximizes the positive impact on the beneficiary population and keeps the negative impact at minimum levels.

According to the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), “payments for environmental services (also called ecosystem services payments or PES) represent payments to farmers or landowners who have agreed to undertake certain actions to manage their lands or river basins to provide an ecological service. Since payments provide incentives to owners and managers of land (agricultural, forestry, etc.) or indirectly to those who work the land or who produce crops (agricultural, usually). However, there is potential for scaling up the categories to which PES is addressed. Within a balanced balance between investment and benefits, the built environment could \”borrow\” from the natural capital offer, either as supporting base (rooftop gardens or parks, green facades, etc.), or through technology (biomimetics, which imitate processes in nature and offer similar chemo-physical results), and this new attribute of the built infrastructure can be monetized with advantages for all parties, including nature that gave up the physical place where the new construction appeared), through similar schemes.

The UNDP describes the stages of preparing a PES system, including \”negotiating agreements, legal structure, financing and implementation\”: 1. Identifying ecosystem services and geographic boundaries; 2. Identifying sellers/providers and buyers/beneficiaries; 3. Defining the market and the price; 4. Determining governance, institutional, and legal arrangements; 5. Collecting basic data on biophysical data for the monitoring system.

It aims to: – Communicate the knowledge and applications of ecosystem services and values to decision-makers at all levels and to the general public, thus building local and political support and convinced (potential) donors that the benefits of conserving, restoring, and sustainably using ecosystems usually exceed the costs. This system is “based on the twin principles that those who benefit from environmental services should pay for the service, and that those who provide the environmental services should be compensated for this.” An example of this is the reforestation campaign in Costa Rica (since 1996)—PSA (Payment for Environmental Services), where the forest area lost between 1950 and 1995 from 50% to 25% of the country\’s area was financed with such incentives to reforest or protect over 8% of the national territory; the payments were made on categories of services: biodiversity preservation, water services, carbon services (sequestration), and landscape (cultural ecosystem services). Other large-scale examples include the Chinese Grain for Green program (1999, to discourage deforestation for agricultural crops) and the American Dust Bowl program, against crops on eroded land.

The conferences of IUCN, held every four years, have produced extremely important results over time—such as the World Heritage Convention (within which IUCN officially advises on natural heritage) or the crucial Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), within or through which important stages of the concept of biodiversity or ecosystem services were defined or validated, for which related materials are prepared by TEEB, IPBES, SGAN, and ESP.

The general objective of the Commission on Ecosystem Management is \”improving the body of knowledge on ecosystem services and their values and promoting the integration of this knowledge into planning and decision-making for the sustainable management of ecosystems,\” accompanied by three specific objectives: 1. Stimulating research on the capacity and resilience of ecosystems to provide goods and services in a sustainable manner and developing tools and guidelines for practical applications and integrated assessments of ecosystem services. 2. Highlighting the importance (value) of ecosystem services for governments, communities, and corporations