The Economic Evaluation of Urban Ecosystem Services into Policy-Making Processes

ABSTRACT

In view of the uncontrolled cities urbanization, climate change and, last but not least, the pandemic crisis from COVID-19, there is the need to implement intervention practices at the territorial scale by an integrated sustainable approach. This to consolidate the different aspects of the design system made by interacting elements in the respect of the environmental, social and economic dimension. To this, the ecosystem services are of international interest with regard to the functional link between the environment and sustainable development, so as to identify methodological and operational issues at the basis of the most current research in the economic evaluation field. With this contribution it is intended to provide an evaluation framework to support public–private decision-makers in establishing the most significant initiatives of sustainable urban development, taking into account the impacts that they would generate on the reference urban context in terms of ecosystem services supply. The proposed framework is developed in a win–win logic capable of merging the different interests of the stakeholders, as well as the purpose of supporting the ecological transition and environmental protection of urban ecosystems according to an integrated-multidimensional pathway. The proposed evaluation process took note of the theoretical, methodological, and operational issues underlying the economic valuation of urban ecosystem services and their addition into policy-making processes. The economic policy implications by the proposed framework will be emphasized in the concluding section along with research perspectives. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.