The value of services provide by the sea of Azores: contributions to regional development (seavalue project).

Objectivo

The project goal is to provide awareness to governments, stakeholders and people about the estimation of services value provided by the Sea of Azores. The objectives to this suppose are:

1. Marine Sector of Azores characterization
2. Approach a framework to Azorean marine ecosystem services
3. Analyze the relations between Ocean sector and marine ecosystem services and Decision Support
4. Establish the contribution of the Sea to the Regional Development Policy.
5. Identified option of values for/ from the sea of Azores to Governance.

This project aims to reach the identification of the economic benefits for the Region and also analyze the contribution of benefits at National and European level. The marine economy of the Azores position in the international sphere could provide important benefits to investment and conservation level and also provide political empowerment and reinforcement of geopolitical position.
Within the international context of the current financial crisis, investment at the sea allow the conversion sector, employment benefits, income generation, greater range of ecosystem services and other economic benefits, potential new marine services and as a long-term goal the optimization of sea benefits sustainable use. Also provides bases to develop strategies for the emerging transition issues as climate change and global governance dynamics.

Research on the identification and assessment of ES provision is developing more and more, because its outcome may provide new practical tools to conciliate biodiversity conservation with socio-economic demands (Costanza et al., 1997; Turner et al., 2007).
Some studies about the economic benefits establishes a network of marine reserves ( Mumby et al., 2007) and ecosystem services provided by them ( Holmlund and Hammer, 1999), this is a fundamental political point for Azores.
Azores could be an international benchmark regarding the benefits of marine services in a regional economy and development, guidelines and the actual political framework context. One of the challenges, at international level, is to turn recognition of ecosystems as natural assets that supply fundamental life support service into incentives and institutions, in order to guide investments in natural capital (Daily and Matson, 2008).The project could be the beginning for an innovate market, the ecosystem service market. The Azores has potential of marine capital investment, to reduce impacts and the loss of services with the need to the design new ocean governance mechanism.