Supporting Sustainable Development Goals through Regulation and Maintenance Ecosystem Services

Sustainable development goals (SDGs) have a huge impact on global policies. Contextually, the concept of ecosystem services (ESs) naturally relies on the importance of integrating human activities into a framework in which ecosystems play a fundamental role in supporting upcoming societies. Introducing ESs in the process of SDG evaluation can be useful to facilitate their achievement through national and local planning policies. Nevertheless, this aspect is still poorly addressed. In the present study, an in-depth analysis has been conducted, to associate regulation and maintenance ecosystem services (ReMESs) with the SDGs set by the 2030 Agenda. Based on the available scientific literature, ReMESs have been linked to the SDGs and SDG targets. Specific attention has been paid to deepening linkages with the SDG targets that explicitly address the introduction of ecosystem and biodiversity values into national and local planning. Finally, SDG evaluation has been further investigated, linking the SDG targets to the statistical measures proposed by the Inter-agency and Expert Group on SDGs (UN-IAEG-SDGs). This last step focused on the Italian context, according to the indicators provided by the National Institute of Statistics. The results show that ReMESs are linked to 8 out of 17 SDGs (47%). Connections decrease when considering the SDG targets (20%) and the national statistical measures (18%). It also emerges that some targets, although being connected to ReMESs, do not have the right indicators to be quantified. Ecosystem services prove to be a valid element through which modern sustainable development goals can be accomplished. This study, which highlights several gaps to be filled, wants to offer valuable help in evaluating SDGs and their implementation through ReMESs.