Biodiversity protection and land use

Biodiversity (biological diversity) is a common good, which needs to be carefully preserved. The protection and sustainable use of ecosystems and species contribute to reducing environmental pressure and natural disasters. Healthy and coherent ecosystems also mitigate the effects of global warming. 

One of the global sustainable development goals is to reduce the degradation of natural habitats and halt the loss of biodiversity.

Statistics Estonia publishes the following information on biodiversity, its protection and land use:

• ecosystem extent and ecosystem services
• nature protection and relevant expenditures;

The statistics can be used to plan nature conservation and biodiversity development, develop a support system and implement landscape and habitat diversity conservation measures.

Ecosystem accounting provides information on the extent of ecosystems, their land owners and services provided. The accounting system is divided into two main sections: the ecosystem extent account and the supply and use tables for ecosystem services in monetary units.

The ecosystem extent account shows the area of Estonian ecosystems by main ecosystem classes and at a more detailed level. The extent account also shows the distribution of ecosystems by land owner type and economic activity.  See the tables and the prototype of on-line visualizations.

The supply and use tables for ecosystem services show the flows of a number of important ecosystem services that enter the economy, broken down by ecosystems that provide the services and service users.

More detailed information on the applied methodology is provided in the methodological reports of 2020 and 2021. The ecosystem accounts development was carried out in 2019–2021 and was co-financed by Eurostat. The record of the methodological seminar, held in June 2021, is available here.

The statistics of compiled ecosystem accounts are experimental and both the list of services and the methods for evaluating services are still being refined and therefore can change in the course of time. The output of experimental statistics may diverge from the traditional requirements of official statistics such as harmonisation, coverage, comparability (geographical and over time) and tried and tested methodology.

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Source data in the statistical database: KK091

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Source data in the statistical database: KK093