Assessing ecosystem services for evidence-based nature-based solutions

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent efforts to map and assess ecosystem services in Malta, highlighting their role in supporting green infrastructure and informing evidence-based policies for sustainable landscape and urban planning.

Contribution

It provides an integrated assessment of ecosystem services in Malta, demonstrating multifunctionality and offering a scientific baseline for policy development and nature-based solutions.

Findings

Significant synergies between ecosystem services indicate multifunctionality.

Urban areas sometimes show higher ecosystem service flow per unit area.

Results suggest a mismatch between ecosystem service demand and capacity.

Abstract

The term nature-based solutions has often been used to refer to adequate green infrastructure, which is cost-effective and simultaneously provides environmental, social and economic benefits, through the delivery of ecosystem services, and contributes to build resilience. This paper provides an overview of the recent work mapping and assessing ecosystem services in Malta and the implications for decision-making. Research has focused on the identification and mapping of ecosystems, and ecosystem condition, the capacity to deliver key ecosystem services and the actual use (flow) of these services by local communities leading to benefits to human well-being. The integration of results from these different assessments demonstrates several significant synergies between ecosystem services, indicating multifunctionality in the provision of ecosystem services leading to human well-being. This is considered as key criterion in the identification of green infrastructure in the Maltese Islands. A gradient in green infrastructure cover and ecosystem services capacity is observed between rural and urban areas but ecosystem services flow per unit area was in some cases higher in urban environments. These results indicate a potential mismatch between ecosystem service demand and capacity but also provide a scientific baseline for evidence-based policy which fosters the development of green infrastructure through nature-based innovation promoting more specific and novel solutions for landscape and urban planning.