Why should you care about ecosystem services?

Your business in one way or another is built on natural resources, on so-called ecosystem services. For instance, agribusinesses depend on freshwater, soil quality, and erosion control that ecosystems offer. Insurance companies can mitigate their losses caused by extreme weather by benefitting from coastal protection provided by coral reefs and wetlands, while fishers rely on these habitats for commercial fish species. A decline in any of these services can substantially affect the bottom line. At the same time if a company plays a role in damaging an ecosystem service, it exposes itself to regulatory, reputational or other forms of risk potentially resulting in financial loss.

About Ecosystem Services Evaluation

Assessing ecosystem services gives an overview on how much nature and the services it provides are essential to the operation of our economies and societies. There is, however no economic or monetary estimate of ecosystem services with absolute validity. Therefore any valuation exercise needs to be context-related as well as including non monetary, socio-economic estimation in order to contribute to sustainable economies and societies. For this very reason, we are striving to provide a complex, multidisciplinary and participatory approach that analyses ecosystem services with stakeholders involvement from as many perspectives as possible.

What do we provide to make your business more sustainable?

Our complex services will help you understand your business dependencies on natural resources and your project impacts on the society and environment. We will identify risks as well as financial and policy opportunities for improving your business’s operation and communication with customers and stakeholders. As a result, your company can build a more green brand with potentially increased financial return.

Understanding your dependency on natural resources

One way or another your business depends on natural resources. If you are related to the paper-business for instance, your will not only need trees, but you also require water, if you deal with food products, you would want to work with healthy and clean vegetables, fruit and animals for what you will need clean water, soil and air. Even if you work with insurances, you would want to understand how climate change will affect your clients and thus, your operation. This complex service will enable you to understand how you depend on natural resources, what kind of risks you will have to face and what kind of opportunities already exist to eliminate risks both policy and financial-wise.

Strategy analysis

Through screening basic strategies and documents on processes, operation and systems, we will get to know how your business is built on and depend on natural resources, which will inform organizational decisions to improve corporate strategies.

Natural resources dependency inventory

We will assess your dependencies on natural resources based on the information gathered using scientific assessments helping you form adaptation and transformation strategies of sourcing, supply chain management and product design.

Risk assessment

In relation to your current and planned business operation and systems, we identify potential risks and opportunities in terms of natural resources in order to make your business more sustainable and adaptive to current and future threats.

Understanding your project’s environmental & social impacts

There is practically no project without environmental and social impacts. Often these impacts do not surface in time due to inadequate assessment and discussions with local stakeholders causing further costs and delays. With this complex service, you are enabled to see which natural resources are affected the most and how local stakeholders may react to this, how impacts can be limited and eliminated and for this what potential tools can be used both at financial and policy levels..

Ecosystem services assessment with stakeholders

We assess ecosystem services including monetary and non-monetary valuation with stakeholder involvement including stakeholder mapping, surveys, interviews and economic/quantitative assessment of ecosystem services - this will help you understand what social and environmental impacts your project has.

Project implementation assistance

We identify intervention actions and compile recommendations to adjust your strategy, project implementation and stakeholder involvement to conserve ecosystem services most important to local stakeholders and to mitigate additional risks - this will enable you to avoid expensive legal and financial consequences (eg. compensation) and repetitional loss, mitigate conflicts with local stakeholders and operate more sustainably.

Business and policy opportunities

We reveal business and policy opportunities and requirements at the international, EU and national levels to fulfill the intervention actions or expand further steps throughout your strategies - this will help you see whether your business is thoroughly aligned with EU and national law and discover what financial sources are available to fund your projects or relevant actions.

Our experiences

We have been contributing and carrying out several EU, international and national projects and provided expertise at national and EU processes. See below our latest projects and our top qualities.

Our Latest Projects

Assessing socio-economic impacts of LIFE project
December 06, 2018

Posted by Ecosystem Evaluation

Assessing socio-economic impacts of LIFE project

We assessed the socio-economic impacts of a Hungarian conservation project supported by the EU's LIFE framework, Securing prey sources for endangered Falco cherrug and Aquila heliaca population in the Carpathian basin.

Identifying ecosystem services along highway
October 08, 2018

Posted by Ecosystem Evaluation

Identifying ecosystem services along highway

We worked on identifying and quantifying key ecosystem services potentially affected by a planned highway section in Central and Eastern Europe (M3 in Hungary) with the involvement of local experts and residents.

Influencing international biodiversity policies
February 19, 2018

Posted by Ecosystem Evaluation

Influencing international biodiversity policies

As representers of an international conservation network organization, we influenced and contributed for 10 years to the formulation and implementation of the EU Biodiversity Strategy, the intergovernmental Pan-European Biodiversity Strategy as well as the global Biodiversity Strategy of the Conv




Our strength

We provide you with flexible prices below the market price. Should you be interested in partnering up with us, please send us a message.

Due to our cumulative 20 years of international experience we have an extended network of decision-makers, research and businesses at EU and CEE levels.

We work with a professional network, who can answer your specific questions, let it be about technical or strategic issues to provide you with a complex service experience.

As native Hungarians and experts of the region we are well aware of the challenges of the region - should you need specific work here, we are your right choice.

Our core value is efficiency and effectiveness, which we aim to achieve through time (and money)-saving practices including immediate reactions, thorough preparations and modern project management practices.

We highly depend on our clients, therefore our other core value is to customize tailor-make services to our clients and provide the services our clients truly need and is useful for them.

As a result of our experience, we have thorough knowledge of all these sectors challenges and needs as well as their main actors. We also aim to tear down the silos and ensure these sectors can reach each other’s information.

We know how annoying it is that you are only provided by one piece of information, when you rather would need a complex overview. By providing strategy analysis, project implementation and proposal advice along with financial and policy opportunities, you will get a more thorough picture on both risks and opportunities.

We would like to make sure you are provided with a thorough analysis, but also with a synthesis that stresses the main messages in an easily understandable way, so you will not need another expert to explain it to you.

More then 10 years experiences.

Our team

Veronika is to receive her PhD on environmental economics after 10 years of research and policy experience in the international environmental arena working with the UN, the European Union and national governments. Her key expertise lies in sustainability as well as in ecosystem services quantitative evaluation. She is also an ardent mountain climber and a mum of two.

Agnes has been an expert of the European Commission and several international NGOs on ecosystems, green infrastructure, nature-based solutions and climate change adaptation. Her key expertise are related to qualitative ecosystem services evaluation and environmental policies. She is also a certified organisational developer and facilitator, and a language enthusiast currently working on Chinese proficiency.

Veronika Kiss

Veronika is in her last year to receive her PhD on environmental economics after 10 years of research and policy experience in the internati…

Veronika Kiss

Co-Founder

Agnes Zolyomi

Agnes has been an expert of the European Commission and several international NGOs on ecosystems and nature-based solutions, currently prepa…

Agnes Zolyomi

Co-Founder

Who inspired Us

Several people and associations from the business world inspired us to work for ecosystem services. See below some examples:.

Contact

Feel free to get in touch with any enquiries and we will get back to you as soon as possible. LinkedIn , Twitter