Ecosystems Services and Spatial Planning: Lessons Learned from the Life SAM4CP Project

The debate on Ecosystem Services (ESs) focuses mainly on theoretical research aimed at providing methodological coherence between ES definition, classification, mapping and utilization. Such increasing knowledge is fundamental in the generation of consensus among researchers, public administrators and technicians considering the different aspects and possible use of ESs in many fields: social and environmental studies, geography, urban planning disciplines and land use planning. In regards to the latter two fields, it seems that ES assessment is still considered to be in its infancy when use thereof is aimed at providing a prescriptive framework for land use regulation. From this perspective, the LIFE SAM4CP research project is aimed at generating better solutions for the communities and their environment using ES assessment at the municipal level as a proxy for local land use planning (the Italian PRGC). Also, SAM4CP practices the multilevel governance to engage all the various stakeholders involved in the dynamics of land use planning thanks to the Co-planning Conference procedure within which the ES paradigm is experimented to evaluate the contents/actions of the urban plans. This paradigm is adequate for comparison with both plans, policies and projects at different scales (regional, metropolitan and local levels) and with the forms of organization and decision-making of the territorial government. The research assumes that, according to local land use regulations, building permits and other authorization for possible land use transformation on the territory are generated by public decision; in fact, land use regulations should take into account the potential effects that land use alteration may have on ecosystems on the local scale. This is particularly evident about the agricultural land in respect of which the land take process completely cancels the Crop production ES. Thus, within this paper, we aim to outline that ecosystem services-based planning framework provide sustainability for land use transformations because it improves the understanding of planned actions consequences.