The SEEA EEA carbon account for the Netherlands

The carbon account provides a comprehensive overview of all relevant carbon stocks and flows. The carbon account for the Netherlands was developed within the scope of the ‘System of Environmental Economic Accounts – Experimen tal Ecosystem Accounting’ (SEEA EEA) project for the Netherlands (Natuurlijk Kapitaalrekeningen Nederland: NKR_NL), which is currently c arried out jointly by Statistics Netherlands and Wageningen University. Funding and support was provided by the Ministries of Economic Affairs and Infrastructure and the Environment. Within the NKR_NL project, a number of accounts are currently under devel opment. The carbon account is described in detail in this report

A new method for fine-scale assessments of the average urban Heat island over large areas and the effectiveness of nature-based solutions

People living in cities experience extra heat stress due to the so-called Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. To gain an insight into the spatial variability of the UHI for the Netherlands, a detailed map (10 m horizontal resolution) has been calculated that shows the summer-averaged daily maximal UHI situation. The map is based on a relationship between the UHI, mean wind speed at 10 m height and the number of people living within a distance of 10 km, derived from simulations of over 100 European cities with the extensively validated urban climate model UrbClim. The cooling effect of green and blue infrastructure is also taken into account in the map, based on these simulation results. The presented map will help local authorities in defining target areas for climate adaptation measures and estimate the impact of nature-based solutions

Financing intersectoral action for health: a systematic review of co-financing models.

BACKGROUND: Addressing the social and other non-biological determinants of health largely depends on policies and programmes implemented outside the health sector. While there is growing evidence on the effectiveness of interventions that tackle these upstream determinants, the health sector does not typically prioritise them. From a health perspective, they may not be cost-effective because their non-health outcomes tend to be ignored. Non-health sectors may, in turn, undervalue interventions with important co-benefits for population health, given their focus on their own sectoral objectives. The societal value of win-win interventions with impacts on multiple development goals may, therefore, be under-valued and under-resourced, as a result of siloed resource allocation mechanisms. Pooling budgets across sectors could ensure the total multi-sectoral value of these interventions is captured, and sectors' shared goals are achieved more efficiently. Under such a co-financing approach, the cost of interventions with multi-sectoral outcomes would be shared by benefiting sectors, stimulating mutually beneficial cross-sectoral investments. Leveraging funding in other sectors could off-set flat-lining global development assistance for health and optimise public spending. Although there have been experiments with such cross-sectoral co-financing in several settings, there has been limited analysis to examine these models, their performance and their institutional feasibility. AIM: This study aimed to identify and characterise cross-sectoral co-financing models, their operational modalities, effectiveness, and institutional enablers and barriers. METHODS: We conducted a systematic review of peer-reviewed and grey literature, following PRISMA guidelines. Studies were included if data was provided on interventions funded across two or more sectors, or multiple budgets. Extracted data were categorised and qualitatively coded. RESULTS: Of 2751 publications screened, 81 cases of co-financing were identified. Most were from high-income countries (93%), but six innovative models were found in Uganda, Brazil, El Salvador, Mozambique, Zambia, and Kenya that also included non-public and international payers. The highest number of cases involved the health (93%), social care (64%) and education (22%) sectors. Co-financing models were most often implemented with the intention of integrating services across sectors for defined target populations, although models were also found aimed at health promotion activities outside the health sector and cross-sectoral financial rewards. Interventions were either implemented and governed by a single sector or delivered in an integrated manner with cross-sectoral accountability. Resource constraints and political relevance emerged as key enablers of co-financing, while lack of clarity around the roles of different sectoral players and the objectives of the pooling were found to be barriers to success. Although rigorous impact or economic evaluations were scarce, positive process measures were frequently reported with some evidence suggesting co-financing contributed to improved outcomes. CONCLUSION: Co-financing remains in an exploratory phase, with diverse models having been implemented across sectors and settings. By incentivising intersectoral action on structural inequities and barriers to health interventions, such a novel financing mechanism could contribute to more effective engagement of non-health sectors; to efficiency gains in the financing of universal health coverage; and to simultaneously achieving health and other well-being related sustainable development goals

Key criteria for developing ecosystem service indicators to inform decision making

Decision makers are increasingly interested in information from ecosystem services (ES) assessments. Scientists have for long recognised the importance of selecting appropriate indicators. Yet, while the amount and variety of indicators developed by scientists seems to increase continuously, the extent to which the indicators truly inform decision makers is often unknown and questioned. In this viewpoint paper, we reflect and provide guidance on how to develop appropriate ES indicators for informing decision making, building on scientific literature and practical experience collected from researchers involved in seven case studies. We synthesized 16 criteria for ES indicator selection and organized them according to the widely used categories of credibility, salience, legitimacy (CSL). We propose to consider additional criteria related to feasibility (F), as CSL criteria alone often seem to produce indicators which are unachievable in practice. Considering CSL & F together requires a combination of scientific knowledge, communication skills, policy and governance insights and on-field experience. We present a checklist to evaluate CSL & F of your ES indicators. This checklist helps to detect and mitigate critical shortcomings in an early phase of the development process, and aids the development of effective indicators to inform actual policy decisions

Assessing the impact and cost-effectiveness of needle and syringe provision and opioid substitution therapy on hepatitis C transmission among people who inject drugs in the UK: an analysis of pooled data sets and economic modelling

Background There is limited evidence of the impact of needle and syringe programmes (NSPs) and opioid substitution therapy (OST) on hepatitis C virus (HCV) incidence among people who inject drugs (PWID), nor have there been any economic evaluations. Objective(s) To measure (1) the impact of NSP and OST, (2) changes in the extent of provision of both interventions, and (3) costs and cost-effectiveness of NSPs on HCV infection transmission. Design We conducted (1) a systematic review; (2) an analysis of existing data sets, including collating costs of NSPs; and (3) a dynamic deterministic model to estimate the impact of differing OST/NSP intervention coverage levels for reducing HCV infection prevalence, incidence and disease burden, and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios to measure the cost-effectiveness of current NSP provision versus no provision. Setting Cost-effectiveness analysis and impact modelling in three UK sites. The pooled analysis drew on data from the UK and Australia. The review was international. Participants PWID. Interventions NSP coverage (proportion of injections covered by clean needles) and OST. Outcome New cases of HCV infection. Results The review suggested that OST reduced the risk of HCV infection acquisition by 50% [rate ratio (RR) 0.50, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.40 to 0.63]. Weaker evidence was found in areas of high (≥ 100%) NSP coverage (RR 0.77, 95% CI 0.38 to 1.54) internationally. There was moderate evidence for combined high coverage of NSPs and OST (RR 0.29, 95% CI 0.13 to 0.65). The pooled analysis showed that combined high coverage of NSPs and OST reduced the risk of HCV infection acquisition by 29–71% compared with those on minimal harm reduction (no OST, ≤ 100% NSP coverage). NSPs are likely to be cost-effective and are cost-saving in some settings. The impact modelling suggest that removing OST (current coverage 81%) and NSPs (coverage 54%) in one site would increase HCV infection incidence by 329% [95% credible interval (CrI) 110% to 953%] in 2031 and at least double (132% increase; 95% CrI 51% to 306%) the number of new infections over 15 years. Increasing NSP coverage to 80% has the largest impact in the site with the lowest current NSP coverage (35%), resulting in a 27% (95% CrI 7% to 43%) decrease in new infections and 41% (95% CrI 11% to 72%) decrease in incidence by 2031 compared with 2016. Addressing homelessness and reducing the harm associated with the injection of crack cocaine could avert approximately 60% of HCV infections over the next 15 years. Limitations Findings are limited by the misclassification of NSP coverage and the simplified intervention definition that fails to capture the integrated services that address other social and health needs as part of this. Conclusions There is moderate evidence of the effectiveness of OST and NSPs, especially in combination, on HCV infection acquisition risk. Policies to ensure that NSPs can be accessed alongside OST are needed. NSPs are cost-saving in some sites and cost-effective in others. NSPs and OST are likely to prevent considerable rates of HCV infection in the UK. Increasing NSP coverage will have most impact in settings with low coverage. Scaling up other interventions such as HCV infection treatment are needed to decrease epidemics to low levels in higher prevalence settings. Future work To understand the mechanisms through which NSPs and OST achieve their effect and the optimum contexts to support implementation. Funding The National Institute for Health Research Public Health Research programme. </jats:sec

Trees enhance soil carbon sequestration and nutrient cycling in a silvopastoral system in south-western Nicaragua

Tree occurrence in silvopastoral systems of Central America has been under pressure for various reasons including attempts to improve grassland productivity and the need for wood. However, scattered isolated trees are also recognized to provide ecosystem services like shade, fodder and fruits that are important to cattle in the dry season. In addition, trees may enhance the climate change mitigation potential of silvopastoral systems through increased carbon (C) uptake and subsequent soil carbon sequestration. Through differences in plant traits like nutrient uptake, canopy structure and litter quality, tree species may have an effect on C and nutrient cycling. Due to a prevailing north-easterly wind in the study area, three distinct areas associated with the impact of tree litter deposition were identified: (1) open pasture—no tree litter deposition; (2) tree canopy—above and belowground tree litter; and (3) leaf litter cone—aboveground tree litter deposition. Furthermore, the effect of tree species, Guazuma ulmifolia and Crescentia alata, were considered. The presence of trees, as compared to pasture, caused larger topsoil C, N and P contents. In the subsoil, C content was also larger due to tree presence. Soil fractionation showed that tree-induced larger litter input subsequently increased free and occluded OM fractions and ultimately increased stabilized SOM fractions. Therefore, trees were found to enhance soil C sequestration in these silvopastoral systems. This is also supported by the soil respiration data. Although the respiration rates in the pasture subplots were lower than in the leaf litter subplots, the difference was not significant, which suggests that part of the extra C input to the leaf litter subplots stayed in the soil. Nutrient cycling was also enhanced by tree presence, but with a clear differentiation between species. C. alata (Jı´caro) enhanced available and stabilized forms of organic N, while G. ulmifolia (Gua´cimo) enhanced available soil P and stabilized organic P

Effects of budget constraints on conservation network design for biodiversity and ecosystem services

Limited budgets and budget cuts hamper the development of effective biodiversity conservation networks. Optimizing the spatial configuration of conservation networks given such budget constraints remains challenging. Systematic conservation planning addresses this challenge. Systematic conservation planning can integrate both biodiversity and ecosystem services as conservation targets, and hence address the challenge to operationalize ecosystem services as an anthropocentric argument for conservation. We create two conservation scenarios to expand the current conservation network in the Dutch province of Limburg. One scenario focuses on biodiversity only and the other integrates biodiversity and ecosystem services. We varied conservation budgets in these scenarios and used the software Marxan to assess differences in the resulting network configurations. In addition, we tested the network's cost-effectiveness by allocating a conservation budget either in one or in multiple steps. We included twenty-nine biodiversity surrogates and five ecosystem services. The inclusion of ecosystem services to expand Limburg's conservation network only moderately changed prioritized areas, compared to only conserving biodiversity. Network expansion in a single time-step is more efficient in terms of compactness and cost-effectiveness than implementing it in multiple time-steps. Therefore, to cost-effectively plan conservation networks, the full budget should ideally be available before the plans are implemented. We show that including ecosystem services to cost-effectively expand conservation networks can simultaneously encourage biodiversity conservation and stimulate the protection of conservation-compatible ecosystem services

Spatial prioritisation for conserving ecosystem services : comparing hotspots with heuristic optimisation

Context: The variation in spatial distribution between ecosystem services can be high. Hence, there is a need to spatially identify important sites for conservation planning. The term ‘ecosystem service hotspot’ has often been used for this purpose, but definitions of this term are ambiguous. Objectives: We review and classify methods to spatially delineate hotspots. We test how spatial configuration of hotspots for a set of ecosystem services differs depending on the applied method. We compare the outcomes to a heuristic site prioritisation approach (Marxan). Methods: The four tested hotspot methods are top richest cells, spatial clustering, intensity, and richness. In a conservation scenario we set a target of conserving 10 % of the quantity of five regulating and cultural services for the forest area of Telemark county, Norway. Results: Spatial configuration of selected areas as retrieved by the four hotspots and Marxan differed considerably. Pairwise comparisons were at the lower end of the scale of the Kappa statistic (0.11–0.27). The outcomes also differed considerably in mean target achievement, cost-effectiveness in terms of land-area needed per unit target achievement and compactness in terms of edge-to-area ratio. Conclusions: An ecosystem service hotspot can refer to either areas containing high values of one service or areas with multiple services. Differences in spatial configuration among hotspot methods can lead to uncertainties for decision-making. This also has consequences for analysing the spatial co-occurrence of hotspots of multiple services and of services and biodiversity