Porto Cesareo Marine Protected Area

The PC-MPA lies in the centre part of the Ionian Sea (South-eastern part of Italy) and includes three marine SACs (Special Areas of Conservation) designated on the basis of the “Habitat Directive” (Dir. 92/43/EEC). In 2011, the PC-MPA has been included in the SPAMI (Specially Protected Areas of Mediterranean Importance) list. It encompasses a surface of 16,654 hectares and a coastline of 32 km. The area is an example of outstanding natural heritage, both for the wild nature of its depths, for the landscape and for the historical-architectural elements, and represents a very important geological and geomorphological laboratory. The Italian approach to MPA management is based on a three-level zoning to which three different protection regimes correspond: Zone A—No Take Zone covering 1.2% of the total area, Zone B—General Reserve with 18.3% of the total area, Zone C—Partial Reserve covering the 80.5% of the MPA. The main town is Porto Cesareo, with 6230 inhabitants, mostly employed in tourism and fishing.

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.

Part of the public believes that Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) restrict economic activity, adding costs to businesses and limiting opportunities for growth and employment, even for those sectors that benefit from improved marine biodiversity and environmental conditions [1].

In contrast, there is consolidated scientific evidence that protected areas provide a range of fundamental services to the constituents of human well-being, the so-called Ecosystem Services (ES). ES have been defined as “the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems” [2,3,4,5] and, more recently, as “the contributions of ecosystems to the benefits that are used in economic and other human activity” [6] (p. 27). Use incorporates direct physical consumption (provisioning services, such as food and water), enjoyment (cultural services, such as recreational, spiritual, religious, and other non-material benefits) and indirect receipt of services (regulating services, such as the regulation of floods, droughts, land degradation, and disease; supporting services, such as soil formation and nutrient cycling).

Italian Ministry of the Environment 

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.

The eValue integrated environmental accounting model is based on two main annual accounts: the stock account and the flow account [28,29]. If we look at the financial accounting system, stock refers to the value of an asset at a balance sheet date, while flow refers to the total value of transactions (sales or purchases, income or expenses) during an accounting period. Stock and flow are related because the stock of available resources is usually augmented by the flow of new investment and depleted by the flow of depreciation.

Francesca Visintin, eFrame ltd.

The eValue integrated environmental accounting model

In 2013 the Italian Ministry of the Environment and Protection of Land and Sea financed the development and implementation of the integrated environmental accounting system in the Italian MPAs. The project aimed to assess the MPA’s ecological and economic value, with particular reference to the ES generated in each protected area [24] and the aggregated net benefit returned to the economy. Within this framework, the economic value of MPA was assessed by applying the integrated environmental accounting model called “eValue” [25] applied to MPAs contributes to the debate at the local scale and is intended to be a tool to support communication, policy, and social acceptability goals. In terms of a communication tool, it aims to demonstrate that the wealth produced within the MPA is greater than the public investment and that the establishment of a protected area should not be understood as a limiting factor in the economic development of the area, but as an opportunity to create economic, social, and environmental wealth. In terms of a policy tool, the results will demonstrate to decision makers, stakeholders, and funding agencies that, in addition to being invaluable in general terms, protected areas are at least as valuable as estimated by the application of integrated environmental accounting. In terms of a social acceptability tool, integrated environmental accounting highlights the reserve effect, i.e., an effect related to the establishment of the MPA that increases the abundance of fish, due to the management effectiveness of the protected area, as well as the increase in tourist attraction, due to the presence of environmental values. The eValue is based on a Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) approach. There are relatively few comprehensive CBAs of MPAs currently available from either within or outside Europe, making it difficult to draw overall conclusions about the net benefits of individual MPAs or MPA networks in Europe. Despite being unable to account for a comprehensive representation of benefits, these studies suggest that the overall welfare benefits of MPAs exceed total costs [1]. Studies on marine systems estimated that the calculated benefits significantly outweigh the estimated costs [1] and that every euro invested in marine protected areas would generate a return of at least 3 EUR [26], while protected areas have rates of return on public spending of between $6.2 and $28.2 for every public dollar invested, generating significant income multipliers and creating job opportunities