Natural resources and physical cultural resources, termed in this paper as “Environmental Resources”, can be important assets for regional competitiveness and innovation. In recent years, these kinds of assets are being more considered in regional development strategies, because they can be a source of differentiation and of new competitive advantages. However, innovation policies and its instruments are largely shaped for knowledge-based innovation. On the contrary, policies towards environmental resources are usually focused on environment protection.

In this paper we discuss the role of environmental resources in regional innovation policies. We begin by relating environmental resources with regional development and by emphasizing some opposite views in what refers to the function of environmental resources in regional development. Next we deal with the relationship between regional competitive advantages and innovation strategies. The specificities and problems that arise when the aim is to construct competitiveness advantages through environmental resources valorisation are the core of section 3. In that section, we highlight the characteristics of environmental resources and we check the applicability of the “natural resource curse” to the competitiveness based on environmental resources. The reasons that justify the public intervention as well as some instruments of national / regional /local policy are also examined. The paper ends with some conclusions and policy implications.