CICES

CICES, the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services, is a hierarchical framework for organizing and communicating information about ecosystem services. It provides a shared vocabulary intended for use by governments, researchers, businesses, and international organizations to identify, categorize, and compare ecosystem services across different contexts. The classification supports environmental policy, ecosystem accounting, and impact assessment, and is designed to be compatible with international standards such as the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting and the broader ecosystem services literature.

Its structure groups services into three main sections: provisioning services; regulating and maintenance services; and cultural services. Each section is further divided into divisions, groups, and classes, enabling users to describe services at varying levels of detail. The scheme is intended to facilitate consistent mapping between observed ecosystem outputs and standardized service categories, thereby supporting comparability across studies and contexts.

CICES was developed by the European Environment Agency (EEA) with input from international partners, and has undergone revisions to expand coverage and improve crosswalks with other taxonomies used in policy and accounting. The classification is widely cited in European policy work and increasingly used in international research and accounting practices.

Applications include national ecosystem accounts, biodiversity assessments, environmental impact analyses, and cost–benefit evaluations. While widely used, the classification is complex and evolving, and practical use often requires crosswalks to other ecosystem services taxonomies and local adaptation.

Access and availability: the classification is publicly available as an open reference with guidance documents that describe its structure and recommended usage.