Invasive Alien Species impact on Ecosystem Services

Invasive Alien Species (IAS) represent a major threat to biodiversity in Europe and worldwide, capable of causing significant damages to the ecology, economy and livelihood of recipient countries. Recognising the need for a coordinated set of actions for the prevention, early eradication and management of IAS, the European Parliament and Council adopted the EU Regulation 1143/2014 (hereafter referred as the IAS Regulation; EU, 2014). In this context, the EU Member States (MS) have given priority to a subset of species named as IAS of Union concern in relation to the potential of these species to cause severe damages such to justify the adoption of dedicated measures at European level. The IAS Regulation requires the risk assessment to include a “description of the adverse impact on biodiversity and related ecosystem services” and an “assessment of the potential costs of damage” of IAS in the EU territory. Despite the availability of several methodologies for IAS impact assessment, there is still a dearth of attention and interest on the effects on socio-economic aspects at EU level. An approach for the assessment of socio-economic impacts of IAS is needed to better perceive the potential damages caused by alien species, in support to the IAS Regulation implementation, with particular reference to the enforcement of Art. 5.1 dictating the inclusion of a description of the adverse impact on biodiversity and related ecosystem services (ES) in the species risk assessment. ES can be evaluated and used to estimate the benefits deriving from nature conservation and justify costs of interventions (Maes et al., 2014). We argue that the same approach can be followed to estimate the adverse impact of IAS on our society, in relation to biodiversity loss and services decline. With this report we intend to present a novel approach for the assessment of IAS impact on ES with application in the implementation of the IAS Regulation.JRC.D.2-Water and Marine Resource