Enriching the Italian Genuine Saving with water and soil depletion: National trends and regional differences

Biasi, Paola, Ferrini, Silvia, Borghesi, Simone, Rocchi, Benedetto and Di Matteo, Massimo (2019) Enriching the Italian Genuine Saving with water and soil depletion: National trends and regional differences. Ecological Indicators, 107. ISSN 1470-160X

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Abstract

National and international governments aim to promote the responsible management of the natural capital but measuring its contribution to economic growth is still a challenging exercise. The natural capital supports a plurality of environmental functions whereas the economic growth is frequently measured by aggregated indicators. In this paper, we propose an extended version of the Genuine Saving macro indicator to account for water and soil depletion. Further, as natural capital is spatially heterogeneous we estimate Genuine Saving for Italy for the period 2000–2015 at the regional level. Whilst the case study produces specific results for Italy the methodological framework is broadly applicable to other states. The Italian comparison shows that soil and water provide an absolute change of roughly 1% of the GS but average relative regional variations are between 5 and 33% of GDP, showing that the geographical scale of sustainability analysis is a crucial element for responsible management of national assets. The methodological contribution suggests that the Genuine Saving can support policy makers in developing targeted policies for sustainable growth.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	adjusted net savings,regional sustainability,loss of soil and water,beyond gdp,sdg 8 - decent work and economic growth ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/decent_work_and_economic_growth
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE) Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Environmental Social Sciences Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Collaborative Centre for Sustainable Use of the Seas
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	30 Aug 2019 08:30
Last Modified:	22 Oct 2022 05:10
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/72064
DOI:	10.1016/j.ecolind.2019.105573

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