Directorate Sustainable Resources

The justification for measures addressing Agri-Environment-Climate payments (AEC) is a crucial issue for authorities working at the Rural Development Program (RDP). The RDP 2014-2020 offers the possibility to include environmental benefits and externalities as elements that drive decision-making. Such benefits and externalities include the ecosystem services (ES) provided by farming practices in semi-natural ecosystems such as alpine pastures and mountain hay meadows. An approach based on ES is proposed to support and to account for AEC measures in the Autonomous Province of Trento, relying on decision models and scenario analysis. The method is still in development and is currently being tested as to its effectiveness. In the present paper, however, we present the approach and the case study area, with preliminary insights and expected results. The decision framework consists of livestock management and alpine grassland use; its objective is the sustainable production of fodder, compatible with conservation of grassland biodiversity. In addition to habitat for biodiversity, other ES such as water purification, aesthetic and recreation value will be considered in subsequent steps. The need for simplification and reliability, along with data scarcity, strongly limits the degree of sophistication and makes it challanging to create a tool, which is accurate and easy-to-use at the same time.

Appendice 1: Le matrici 255 Appendice 2: Gli indicatori delle componenti ambientali 273 Appendice 3: Rassegna su alcuni studi di valutazione 295 Glossario 319 BIBLIOGRAFIA 323 8 10 Sostenibilità Sostenibilità? Sostenibilità debole Sostenibilità forte Corrente etica Pensiero etico tradizionale che sostiene i diritti e gli interessi individuali L'etica è estesa alle questioni di equità inter e intragenerazionale (generazioni future e popolazioni povere) Le riflessioni etiche sono estese agli interessi collettivi e la natura assume un valore intrinseco e assoluto 17 18

Extending the application of integrated environmental and economic accounts from the national to the local level of government serves several purposes. They can be used not only as an instrument for communicating on the state of the environment and reporting the results of policies, but also as an operational tool e for setting the objectives and designing policies e if made available to the local authorities who have responsibility over the administration of natural resources, land use and conservation policies. The aim of the paper is to test the feasibility of applying hybrid flow accounts at the intermediate and local government levels. As an illustration, NAMEA for air emissions and wastes is applied to a Region, a Province and a Municipality, thus covering the three nested levels of local government in Italy. The study identifies the main issues raised by multi-scale environmental accounting and provides an applied discussion of feasible solutions.

Mainstreaming ecosystem services into policy and decision making is dependent on the availability of spatially explicit information on the state and trends of ecosystems and their services. In particular, the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 addresses the need to account for ecosystem services through biophysical mapping and valuation. This paper reviews current mapping methods, identifies current knowledge gaps and provides the elements for a methodological framework for mapping and assessing ecosystems and their services at European scale. Current mapping methodologies go beyond purely land cover based assessments and include the use of primary data of ecosystem services, the use of functional traits to map ecosystem services and the development of models and ecological production functions. Additional research is needed to cover marine ecosystems and to include the resilience of ecosystems to environmental change in spatially explicit assessments. The ecosystem services cascade which connects ecosystems to human wellbeing is argued to provide a suitable, stepwise framework for mapping ecosystem services in order to support EU policies in a more effective way. We demonstrate the use of this framework for mapping using the water purification service as case.

Several international initiatives have highlighted the need to prove the relevance of ecosystem services inmonetary terms in order to make a comprehensive and compelling case for conservation of biodiversity.The different approaches and frameworks used so far have shown that there is no economic or monetaryestimate of ecosystems or ecosystem services with absolute validity: any valuation exercise is alwayscontext-related and the theoretical rationale behind the applied valuation technique does matter. Thisstudy presents an approach for assessing ecosystem services in monetary terms to support conservationpolicies at the regional and continental scale. First we briefly review the foundation of environmental andecological economics, second we explore the differences between economic models and the applicationof valuation techniques, third we try to pick the difference between the mainstream economic valuationapproach and the translation of biophysical models’ outcomes in monetary terms. Then we present anddiscuss a methodology suitable for associating a monetary cost to ecosystem services when the purposeaddresses conservation policies. In order to provide a contribution, we show a practical case study onwater purification in the northern Mediterranean region.

Freshwater ecosystems are crucially important providers of ecosystem services as they provide clean water for multiple uses including water for drinking, irrigation or recreation. This study presents a spatially explicit assessment of the benefi ts of water services at the scale of Europe. We mapped simple indicators for water provision, water regulation by soils, and water purifi cation by river networks. Both the capacity to provide services as well as the actual fl ow of services were quantifi ed in biophysical terms. Subsequently the monetary value of water purifi cation was assessed for northern Mediterranean river basins using avoided treatment costs. This type of assessment is considered to be a valuable communication tool to integrate scientifi c disciplines and to facilitate the collaboration between experts, policy makers and citizens in the fi eld of water management. Moreover, it is argued that this type of assessment is a useful and feasible alternative for managing water resources in developing countries.

The justification for measures addressing Agri- Environment-Climate payments (AEC) is a crucial issue for authorities working at the Rural Development Program (RDP). The RDP 2014-2020 offers the possibility to include environmental benefits and externalities as elements that drive decision-making. Such benefits and externalities include the ecosystem services (ES) provided by farming practices in semi-natural ecosystems such as alpine pastures and mountain hay meadows. An approach based on ES is proposed to support and to account for AEC measures in the Autonomous Province of Trento, relying on decision models and scenario analysis. The method is still in development and is currently being tested as to its effectiveness. In the present paper, however, we present the approach and the case study area, with preliminary insights and expected results. The decision framework consists of livestock management and alpine grassland use; its objective is the sustainable production of fodder, c...

The importance of habitat services is recognised as crucial, particularly in respect of land-use planning and land management. To test an approach for valuing habitat services at a local scale, two case studies were done. In these studies we adopted the principle that both the physical and biological characteristics of an area are strictly related to its economic value, which will vary according to the environmental indicators that describe the area itself. Both case studies are located in the north-east of Italy. Biophysical mapping and monetary valuation were carried out in different ways raising a number of issues, such as where to start in terms of data provision; how to define/whether to keep the minimum reference unit; how to choose the proper environmental indicators and, eventually, calibrate them; how to choose the most effective valuation technique; how to assign weights to quantitative/qualitative classifications in order to distribute monetary value over space; and how to solve certain technical issues when a specific category of monetary valuation techniques is chosen (e.g. stated and revealed preferences). The two case studies raise a number of challenging questions that must be addressed before even starting the valuation of habitat services.

Appendice 1: Le matrici 255 Appendice 2: Gli indicatori delle componenti ambientali 273 Appendice 3: Rassegna su alcuni studi di valutazione 295 Glossario 319 BIBLIOGRAFIA 323 8 10 Sostenibilità Sostenibilità? Sostenibilità debole Sostenibilità forte Corrente etica Pensiero etico tradizionale che sostiene i diritti e gli interessi individuali L'etica è estesa alle questioni di equità inter e intragenerazionale (generazioni future e popolazioni povere) Le riflessioni etiche sono estese agli interessi collettivi e la natura assume un valore intrinseco e assoluto 17 18