Identification and evaluation of ecosystem services for a regional park: a case study in Italy

This paper analyses the ecosystem services provided by a regional park in the South of Italy. The park, constituted by 12 municipalities, aims at facilitating a smart management of cultural-historic and environmental heritage as well as the optimization in the use of local resources and peculiarities. The ecosystem services actually provided by the park (e.g. CO2sequestration) or potentially usable (e.g. the production of olive-oil) have been identified. The aim is to highlight the essential importance of the natural capital stock and the services it provides for the local economy and for those who can take benefit from them. Neglecting the ecosystem services’ value in decision making processes entails the loss of several assets – in some cases un-replaceable, such as local biodiversity – which may imply serious consequences for the overall ecosystem and the sustainability of the local economic system. © 2014 WIT Press.