Poorer, but richer. An ecosystem services account for Campania, Calabria and Sicily

Abstract

Ecosystems deliver value to people and the economy through ecosystem services. The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission has quantified the use of ecosystem services by the main economic sectors and households at EU level. In this paper, we downscaled the extraction of six ecosystem services for three Southern Italy regions in 2012: Campania, Calabria and Sicily. The results show that these regions, that result poorer than the rest of Italy according to a GDP-based indicator, generate higher flows of ecosystem services compared to the national average. The results should be considered as conservative, as many important ecosystem services are unaccounted. This kind of assessment can be useful for a wide range of polices targeting climate change, biodiversity and sustainable agriculture.