Scientists Unveil Six-Phase Framework to Turn Ecosystem Science into Real Decisions

Ecosystem science has a stubborn problem: decades of sophisticated assessments of biodiversity, ecosystem condition and nature’s services to humanity have largely failed to change how governments and companies actually make decisions. Now a team working across Europe believes it has built the missing bridge. Researchers within the EU Horizon project SELINA (Science for Evidence-based and Sustainable Decisions about Natural Capital) have unveiled the Framework for Integrated Ecosystem Assessment, or FIEA, a modular, step-by-step structure designed to carry ecosystem knowledge from the laboratory into boardrooms, ministries and planning offices. The framework, described in the journal One Ecosystem, distils lessons from the world’s most influential assessment initiatives into a single operational playbook.

The new framework arrives at a moment when the gap between evidence and action has become impossible to ignore. Since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of 2005 first categorised and quantified ecosystem services systematically across broad spatial scales, a cascade of initiatives has attempted to make nature visible in policy. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity reframed biodiversity as a measurable economic asset. IPBES, the intergovernmental platform established in 2012, documented accelerating biodiversity loss in its 2019 Global Assessment and called for transformative change. More recently, the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting became a global statistical standard, and the European Union has made ecosystem reporting mandatory for Member States under Regulation 2024/3024. Yet studies cited by the SELINA team confirm that uptake of ecosystem evidence in decision-support contexts remains persistently low.

The reasons for this failure are well documented but poorly solved. Existing assessment frameworks tend to operate in silos: some serve biodiversity policy implementation, such as the operational MAES Framework developed for the EU Biodiversity Strategy; others, like the Natural Capital Protocol, are tailored to business; still others are bound to specific planning contexts. Frameworks that do bridge sectors, such as the IPBES five-step valuation framework, often remain conceptual, specifying ambitions but not the detailed steps required for implementation. This fragmentation, the authors argue, is a direct barrier to holistic assessment outcomes that respect the interdependencies among ecosystem components and the diverse needs of the people who use the results.

FIEA answers with a circular architecture of six interconnected phases: Frame, Scope, Design, Assess, Share and Act. The Frame phase establishes the purpose, expected outcomes and intended users of an assessment while analysing stakeholders and identifying risks and opportunities. Scope initiates stakeholder engagement, defines assessment questions and clarifies spatial, temporal, social and ecological boundaries. Design translates objectives into concrete strategies for assessing ecosystem types, extent, condition and services, including the selection of methods, indicators and data. Assess, the technical core, applies those choices to produce mapping, accounting and analysis. Share synthesises results, develops solutions in co-creation with stakeholders and communicates or formally discloses findings, while Act focuses on uptake into decisions, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of effectiveness.

Two design features distinguish this structure from its predecessors. First, it is deliberately iterative: a principle of continuous improvement underpins all phases, with a monitoring step feeding back into reframing, so assessments can evolve across policy or business cycles rather than ending in a shelf-bound report. Second, stakeholder engagement is treated not as a single box to tick but as a continuous, cross-phase activity, visualised in the framework as a cog wheel rotating around the entire cycle, with participation levels ranging from informing to co-creating and empowering, drawing on the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation.

What makes the framework unusual among academic outputs is how it was built. Over roughly 20 months, the 50-organisation SELINA consortium – spanning all 27 EU Member States plus Norway, Switzerland, Israel and the United Kingdom, and uniting ecologists, economists, social scientists, earth observation experts, spatial planners and science communicators – co-created the framework through workshops, online discussions, a dedicated task force and successive feedback rounds. The process began by identifying foundational frameworks, principally the operational MAES Framework, the Natural Capital Protocol, the IPBES five-step valuation framework and, after early feedback flagged an under-representation of public sector perspectives, Latvia’s Integrated Approach to Planning. Each was decomposed into its constituent steps, compared for overlaps and complementarities, and reassembled into a unified whole that also incorporates ecosystem accounting standards and classification schemes such as CICES.

The framework then faced reality. Two scientific SELINA Test Sites piloted its logic, mapping their own workflows onto its steps to verify internal consistency. More demanding were the 15 SELINA Demonstration Projects, real-world decision-making contexts spanning urban and regional development, agriculture, energy, marine spatial planning, forestry, green infrastructure and restoration. Between late 2024 and early 2025, structured interviews with public and private sector participants tested whether the framework’s terminology, clarity and steps aligned with practice. The feedback triggered substantive revisions: steps for developing solutions and for monitoring and evaluating outcomes were inserted; a formal disclosure step was separated from general communication; a glossary was compiled to resolve terminological friction between sectors; and three versions of step descriptions – long, short and simple – were written for experts, practitioners and non-technical users respectively.

Perhaps the most significant refinement concerns justice. Working from the literature on recognitional, procedural, distributive and contextual justice, the team screened every substep to identify where design choices could shape who is recognised, who participates, whose values become visible in the evidence and how benefits and burdens are ultimately distributed. The analysis revealed that justice implications arise earliest and most strongly in framing decisions, but also lurk in seemingly technical choices – for example, favouring monetary indicators can render other value types less apparent – and resurface when trade-offs are negotiated at the decision stage. By mapping these entry points explicitly, FIEA aims to help users anticipate where equity risks emerge and where inclusive interpretation and transparent reasoning matter most.

Demonstration Project partners identified five practical sources of value. The framework’s integrative nature draws ecological, economic and social dimensions into a single process; a policy partner from Belgium reported that “it covers the whole process,” while colleagues in Norway described it as “a good exercise to help structure reporting.” Its transparency drew praise for logical flow – “each stage is clearly defined,” a Bulgarian partner noted, and in Malta it was said to “follow a logical flow and reflect the process we actually went through.” Partners also valued its role as a bridge for knowledge co-creation, its flexibility – “the flexibility of the framework enhances usability,” an Italian interviewee explained – and its alignment with international standards such as the SEEA-EA, the Capitals Protocol and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures’ LEAP approach, which eases interoperability with EU and global debates.

The team is candid about limitations. Balancing the interests of scientists, policy-makers, businesses and civil society required compromises that did not always satisfy everyone. Terminology differences caused misunderstandings, and keeping a framework simultaneously integrative, flexible and simple enough for practical use proved a constant struggle, with real risks of overwhelming users – particularly small enterprises and municipalities with limited capacity. Nevertheless, FIEA will form the backbone of the upcoming SELINA Compendium of Guidance, an interactive tool with filterable pathways, explanation boxes and links to tailored methodological guidance. If it fulfils its promise, the framework could finally give decision-makers what they have lacked: not another conceptual plea to value nature, but a detailed, tested and adaptable procedure for doing so.

Subject of Research: A co-created six-phase framework for integrated ecosystem assessment supporting evidence-based environmental decision-making

Article Title: Framework for Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (FIEA): A structured approach to support evidence-based decision-making

Article References: Framework for Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (FIEA): A structured approach to support evidence-based decision-making. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.3897/oneeco.11.e192685

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/oneeco.11.e192685

Keywords: ecosystem assessment, ecosystem services, FIEA, SELINA project, natural capital, evidence-based decision-making, biodiversity policy, stakeholder engagement, ecosystem accounting, SEEA-EA, environmental governance, justice dimensions