The second meeting of the National Platform for Ecosystem Services (NPES) took place on 13 June 2023, in the premises of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague. The meeting was prepared as part of the activities of the project "One nature" (Integrated project LIFE for the Natura 2000 system in the Czech Republic) and organised by the Global Change Research of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (CzechGlobe) together with the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic.

An overall of 49 participants attended the meeting, representing ministries, government agencies, civil society sector and associations. At the special session of the meeting, the SELINA project was introduced, together with the aims and outcomes, including the national Community of Practice (CoP). The afternoon session consisted of participatory discussions in the form of “World Café”. The aim was to identify the “seeds of change”, the status of the implementation of ecosystem services (ES) in decision-making in the Czech Republic, barriers in implementation and future vision.

Participants listed several examples from various areas, including nature conservation, forestry, water management, agriculture or spatial planning. One of the conclusions was that NPES and CoP should contribute to the methodological support of public policies. Several participants expressed a strong connection of ES quantification to the ecological damage assessment approaches.

Concerning the barriers, major shortcomings included, among others, insufficient knowledge, complexity of the assessments, competing interests, insufficient cooperation among sectors or multiple definitions of ES.

In terms of examples of successful initiatives, nature-based solutions, education and awareness-raising, non-production functions of forests, agri-environmental measures or ecosystem accounting were listed.