Conservation Measures and Loss of Ecosystem Services: A Study Concerning the Sardinian Natura 2000 Network

Federica Leone and Corrado Zoppi
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Federica Leone: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Ambientale e Architettura, University of Cagliari, Cagliari 09123, Italy
Corrado Zoppi: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Ambientale e Architettura, University of Cagliari, Cagliari 09123, Italy

Sustainability, 2016, vol. 8, issue 10, 1-15

Abstract: The seeming dichotomy between the protection of biodiversity and the supply of ecosystem services (ESs) represents an outstanding field of research that requires a structured and detailed analysis. The paper analyzes and discusses the role of ESs within spatial planning and strategic environmental assessment (SEA) procedures through the content analysis methodology and a logical framework (LF) implemented into the SEA of municipal masterplans (MMPs). We discuss the role of ESs as factors that improve the effectiveness of SEA-based processes related to management plans (MPs) of sites that belong to the Sardinian Natura 2000 Network with reference to their positive impacts on environmental quality. The empirical outcomes put in evidence the inconsistencies between MMPs and MPs in terms of sustainability-oriented objectives and potential losses of the ESs productive output due to measures adopted by the MPs in order to protect habitats and species. The scant attention paid to ESs in the operational context of MMPs, MPs and SEA reports, particularly as regards their regulative framework, entails that the issue of the protection of ESs has to be carefully taken into account within the process of the definition and establishment of MPs through an SEA report that integrates the MPs and MMPs LFs.

Keywords: ecosystem services; Natura 2000 Network; strategic environmental assessment; conservation measures; spatial planning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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