Regional Cooperation for New Ecosystem Accounting Indicators in Africa (COPERNICEA) is an Ecosystem Natural Capital Accounting (CECN) project, whose main objective is to provide target countries with a structured competence and an operational, clean and autonomous system, allowing them to rapidly develop an initial ecosystem, biophysical and socio-economic accounting of their natural capital.

The project will be carried out on a basis that allows the sustainability of the system within the national statistical and thematic bodies of six countries in West and North Africa and can be replicated in the region.

The approach followed by the project takes into account national and regional contexts and is based on learning and gradual progression promoting its replicability and adaptability to other geographic and political contexts.

Components and expected results of the project:

• Institution: A regional institutional structure and a community of CECN practitioners are organized and a national ecosystem accounting council set up experimentally in each country.
• Operationalization: A permanent operational geographical and statistical system of CECN in each target country is established and the synthetic indicators for monitoring the evolution of the total ecological value of the targeted countries or territories are produced to allow periodic diagnostic assessments to be carried out.
• Integration: Reliable and comparable information at the regional and governmental levels is provided on the ECCN, used as sources for sustainable development indicators and taken into account in national country accounting systems and in decision-making and planning processes related to ecosystems.
• Capacities: The capacities of national institutions in the countries involved are strengthened and recognized to carry out accounts of their natural capital and produce adequate complementary research.