Ecosystem Services for Spatial planning. Innovative approaches and challenges for practical application

The book investigated the relationship between Ecosystem services (ES) and Spatial planning questioning possible ways of integrating the two concepts and approaches. The implementation of ES in Planning requires a precise method of obtaining significant evidence to aid the decision-making process because the provision of ES depends on the importance this is given in Spatial planning. In recent years, knowledge on ES mainstream approaches to Spatial planning has increased through research and includes existing mindsets and technical procedures. Many of these proposals often remain limited to specific aspects of Spatial planning or, in many cases, focused on only a few components of an existing tool. These modalities, are surely essential in improving the knowledge system but without impacting the planning process, only acting as tools used in the planning process. The integration of ES demands operational frameworks in the Planning process that today is still in its infancy and has precluded its full inclusion. The book acted within this framework, investigating the reasons behind this gap and advancing proposals to bridge ES into the planning process to support decision makers. The work provided a proposal for ensuring the inclusion of ES in Planning process using the incremental measures of limiting, mitigating and compensating soil sealing and land take process promoting operational strategies in applying it. The proposal is supported by a practical application to demonstrate the results, the limits, the opportunities and further new developments. The book introduced the main notions of the book as a starting point for further discussion, as a common basis for all the next considerations. It is dedicated to presenting important issues that must be considered when dealing with ES in terms of methodology, approaches and practical experiences. The issues explored concern the scale, the assessment methods, and the management of Ecosystem Services. Each topic is investigated al-ways considering the Planning perspective, hence having as a framework that of Planning and territorial governance. This part ended presenting experiences on assessment and mapping ES with two modalities: the first collected the practical case study elaborated by the book author in order to test and verify directly opportunities, criticisms and possible improvements in ES assessment/mapping for Planning support; the second presented such innovative aspects that affect the integration of ES in Planning. The last chapters are the operative proposal called “RES – Restart from Ecosystem Services”. In this part, all the contents learnt in the previous phases converged to try to solve such critical aspects and to improve others (e.g. the scale issues, the methods for ES assessment, and the tools for ES integration) by defining a methodology (step by step) of adopting Ecosystem services for Planning support. The steps of the methodology are explained in a theoretical section and an operative application in order to give more essence to all the processes and to validate RES. As a conclusion, the book provided critical reflection on the actual behaviour of the topics in ES and Planning focusing on the social recognition of ES based essentially on their proper acknowledgement and increased awareness.