Climate crisis and spatial planning. Green infrastructure and supply of ecosystem services

The climate crisis and its impacts are affecting, with ever greater pace and intensity, urban, peri-urban, and rural contexts, thus significantly impacting the environment, local development, and quality of life. Therefore, the identification and implementation of planning actions aimed at strengthening the resilience of spatial systems and at accelerating the ecological transition are highly desirable, mainly based on the effective and sustainable use of the functions of nature and natural resources. Within this conceptual framework, this Special Issue has the general objective of proposing and discussing methodological and operational approaches oriented toward the identification of territorial policies directed at the pursuit of climate neutrality and adaptation to the climate crisis. In this perspective, two research profiles of particular relevance in scientific and technical terms are identified - for all spatial contexts, urban, peri-urban, and rural, the strengthening of a set of ESs related to the quality of human life, to be considered as fundamental factors for achieving climate neutrality, among which carbon capture and storage (CCS) is identified as a fundamental reference; - for urban areas, the enhancement of a set of ecosystem services (ESs) significantly linked to the urban microclimate and its quality, especially in relation to the mitigation of the heat island effect and to energy saving. For both profiles, the knowledge of the situation and the evolutionary dynamics of the supply of ESs constitute effective foundations for the assessment of the impacts of planning actions, also with reference to the location and installation of plants for the production of energy from renewable sources. This Editorial Preface proposes some points for reflection to facilitate the reading of the articles of this Special Issue, as follows. First, the conceptual category of green infrastructure is analyzed with reference to territorial contexts characterized by widespread urbanization. Subsequently, the relationships between the supply of certain ESs and the inclusion of parts of the territory in the spatial systems of green infrastructure are discussed, in relation to the current literature. The last section briefly describes the articles of the Special Issue.