One Place, Different Communities’ Perceptions. Mapping Cultural Ecosystem Services in the Asinara National Park (Italy)

As innovative approaches emerge, the concept of Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) is periodically revised and enhanced, presenting new value nuances. Due to their intrinsic site-specific character, CES usually call for subjective, rather than objective, perspectives. Therefore, assessing CES through alternative, non-monetary approaches, is fundamental. This issue becomes even more urgent when attempting to assess and map CES within natural protected areas, and even more so when such areas are non-inhabited, as the absence of any local communities poses additional challenges. In this study, initiated within the GIREPAM(Integrated Management and Ecological Network of Marine Protected Areas) Interreg project and developed within the NEPTUNE Interreg project, the way stakeholders perceive CES supplied by the Asinara National Park in Northern Sardinia (Italy) was investigated. Interviews and questionnaires were delivered in December 2019: more than 600 observations related to CES were mapped and recorded through a participatory GIS in order to investigate whether the different perception of CES supplied by a given natural protected area varies depending on the community. Differences were recorded among three local communities. Results show that significant differences exist in the choice of places, rather than in the perceived values of a natural protected area, and that such differences depend on the local community engaged in recognizing the various types of cultural values.