Assessing the Benefit Produced by Marine Protected Areas: The Case of Porto Cesareo Marine Protected Area (Italy)

Francesca Visintin, Elisa Tomasinsig (), Maurizio Spoto, Francesco Marangon, Paolo D’Ambrosio, Luciana Muscogiuri, Sergio Fai and Stefania Troiano
Additional contact information
Francesca Visintin: eFrame Ltd., Via Linussio 51, 33100 Udine, Italy
Elisa Tomasinsig: eFrame Ltd., Via Linussio 51, 33100 Udine, Italy
Maurizio Spoto: WWF Foundation, Miramare Marine Protected Area, Via Beirut 2/4, 34151 Trieste, Italy
Francesco Marangon: Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Udine, Via Tomadini 30/a, 33100 Udine, Italy
Paolo D’Ambrosio: Stazione Zoologica “Anton Dohrn”, Contrada Torre Spaccata, 87071 Amendolara, Italy
Luciana Muscogiuri: Porto Cesareo Marine Protected Area, Via Alessandro Manzoni 30, 73010 Porto Cesareo, Italy
Sergio Fai: Porto Cesareo Marine Protected Area, Via Alessandro Manzoni 30, 73010 Porto Cesareo, Italy
Stefania Troiano: Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Udine, Via Tomadini 30/a, 33100 Udine, Italy

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 17, 1-19

Abstract: The article focuses on the integrated environmental accounting model called ‘eValue’, developed for protected areas and applied in the research programme coordinated by the Italian Ministry of the Environment and aimed at implementing an environmental accounting system for Italian Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). eValue adopts a cost-benefit analysis approach. Financial accounting based on costs and revenues is integrated with environmental accounting, which reflects environmental costs and environmental revenues, i.e., environmental benefits. The environ-mental costs assess the impacts related to human activities in the MPA expressed by calculating the carbon footprint and the environmental benefits of the marine ecosystem services calculated by applying monetary valuation techniques. The values thus estimated flow into the annual flow account, where the value produced (or consumed) by the MPA is estimated by difference. The eValue model was applied to the Porto Cesareo MPA (Italy). eValue showed that the annual benefit-cost ratio reaches a value of 3.4. Furthermore, the ratio of net benefit to public funding is 3.7, completely covering the number of public transfers and thus summarizing the MPA overall value for money.

Keywords: environmental accounting; life cycle assessment; marine ecosystem service; indica-tors; cost benefit analysis; Porto Cesareo Marine Protected Area; CICES (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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