Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) systems: National and international literature review
Published 2021-02-02
Keywords
- ecosystem services,
- environmental services,
- natural capital,
- bibliometric network analysis,
- VOSviewer software
Copyright (c) 2021 Italian Journal of Forest and Mountain Environments
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Abstract
The payments for ecosystem services are innovative instruments based on the creation of market for goods and services provided by natural ecosystems to stimulate the offer of positive externalities.
The aim of the present study was to analyze the scientific production on payments for ecosystem services - focusing on the forest sector - both at national and international level in the period 2005-2019. To that end, a literature review is conducted through three steps: (1) identification of publications in English on payments for ecosystem/environmental services using Scopus database; (2) identification of publications in Italian on payments for ecosystem/environmental services using Google Scholar and the databases of the main Italian forestry journals; (3) bibliometric analysis of the publications collected using a bibliometric network analysis and a textual analysis.
The results of this study show a steady increase in the number of publications per year from 2005 to today, corresponding to an average number of 81.8 publications per year using the term “payments for ecosystem services” and 46.3 per year using the term “payments for environmental services”. Approximately 40% of total scientific production about this topic focuses on forests. The country with highest number of publications is the United States, while the member countries of the European Union have contributed to 25% of total scientific production. In addition, the results show a rich scientific production in Italian (47 publications corresponding to 3,1 publications per year), but the majority of these publications refers to these innovative market-based instruments to protect natural capital and ecosystem services without providing detailed information from the theoretical and practical point of view. In this context, it would be useful to increase the technical-scientific production in Italian (protocols, manuals, guidelines) with the aim of supporting forest managers in disseminating these market-based instruments in Italy