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.

Challenges addressed

The protected area is primarily an environmental management tool to halt biodiversity loss in coastal and marine habitats. It also addresses socio-economic challenges by improving economic efficiency for the local community. Further challenges include climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration and natural hazards linked to coastal erosion.

Costs of NbS

The Porto Cesareo Marine Protected Area covers 16,654 ha of sea and 32 km of coastline in Puglia. Its yearly costs combine the financial expenditure of running the protected area with the environmental cost of the carbon footprint of human activities within it. Together these amount to about EUR 1.17 million per year (2023 prices), assessed over 2014–2016.

The protected area conserves marine biodiversity and habitats, and the ecosystem services they provide. Together with revenues from fees and services, these benefits are worth about EUR 4.0 million per year. Its attractiveness also draws visitors, whose spending generates direct, indirect and induced income in the local economy: this tourism impact is worth a further EUR 86.6 million per year. In total, the protected area thus generates around EUR 90.6 million per year (2023 prices), although only the EUR 4.0 million is counted in the BCR. Residents and visitors also gain recreational opportunities that support health and wellbeing.

Benefit–cost ratio

Counting only revenues and ecosystem services (about EUR 4.0 million per year) against yearly costs of EUR 1.17 million gives an annual BCR of 3.4: the area creates more than three times the value it costs, fully covering the public funding it receives. The tourism impact is not part of this ratio.

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.

Study overview

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