Many cities are now pioneering and promoting the "greening" of urban spaces and using nature-based solutions (NbS) to urban challenges, for example, to mitigate the effects of urban heating, improve air quality and create pleasant environments for people to enjoy. NbS like creating green areas around the city, urban forests and street trees, green roofs, and rain gardens can be more cost-effective and deliver a wider range of benefits, compared to investing in grey infrastructure solutions. Urban nature also serves to enhance the physical and mental well-being of those living in cities.

For urban planners and policy makers to effectively integrate nature into their decision-making processes, they require regular and consistent information on the local state of nature and the benefits of pursuing NbS. This includes in the context urban climate change adaptation and mitigation. Urban ecosystem accounting, a system used to track the status of urban nature and the benefit it can bring to urban settings, is one of the innovative methods to provide this information. However, this is a new area of statistics to many, and capacity needs to be developed across municipal governments to understand how urban ecosystem accounts can help better integrate nature into cities.

For these reasons, in support of the Sino-German Biodiversity Component implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) partnered with Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences and Foreign Environmental Cooperation Center, under China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment – set out to develop a targeted training project to build capacity in using urban ecosystem accounting, to better integrate nature into cities in China.

This was achieved through the creation of two handbooks and the delivery of six associated workshop sessions under the handbook topics. These were aimed at decision makers and stakeholders in the natural resource management domain, ranging from municipal government departments, planning departments, budgetary offices to private sector and civil society actors who may use urban ecosystem accounts. It was also aimed at those in government offices, research institutes and other organisations likely to be involved in producing urban ecosystem accounts.

The first handbook, “Urban ecosystem accounting: Concepts and implementation”, explained why we need more nature in cities, described what urban ecosystem accounting is and how it should be implemented. The second handbook, “Urban ecosystem accounting: Applications”, provides state of the art applications of urban ecosystem accounting and includes methods, resources, and real-world examples. These included case studies applying urban ecosystem accounting to integrate nature into urban planning in Shenzhen and Beijing in China, as well Oslo, Norway and urban areas in the UK. The handbooks aim to develop a shared understanding of urban ecosystem accounting concepts, structures, and applications, and the different possibilities of applying accounts to address key urban development challenges and goals.