Evaluation of Ecosystem Services production under different Agricultural Policy Scenarios

The objective of this study is to test a methodology for the classification of areas according to the provision of ecosystem services (ES) and for the evaluation of the effects of different agricultural policy scenarios on such classification. The framework was applied to the classification of the 26 municipalities of the province of Ferrara, Italy. The case study area can be considered a traditional cultural landscape, characterised by historical-cultural sites, agricultural areas and protected areas of natural importance. The evaluation focuses on the different categories of ES and applies a set of indicators available from secondary data sources assessing different aspects of ES. From the policy perspective, the context was represented by the pre-2014 CAP and represented the Baseline scenario. In the next stage, the model simulated a New CAP scenario, based on the measures of the RDP 2014-2020 that are addressed on restoring and enhancing ecosystems. The classification approach in each of the two scenarios was implemented under two weighting solutions. As a general remark, it is observed that the provision of ES varies greatly from one municipality to the next. All the municipalities offer a significant number of provisioning and cultural services, mainly connected to recreational opportunities. From the experience carried out in this study, we can conclude that the application of the PROMETHEE, in particular with the integration of the weights for the ES indicators, has shown the potential to support the characterisation of agricultural land in terms of the provision of multiple ES. The study presents MCDA as a suitable tool to illustrate the differences in the provision of ES in different case study areas. To some extent, in spite of the limitations of this work, this also applies to analyzing the consequences of different agricultural policy scenarios in the provision of these services.