The self-government approach to the planning of the Gran Sasso Laga Park as a Socio-Cultural-Ecological System

Abstract

The contribution describes the approach to planning the Gran Sasso Laga National Park envisaged by the authors in the framework of a collaboration agreement between the University of Molise and the Park Authority. The park plan has been proposed as a coordination tool for the territorial co-planning process, based on a non-hierarchical interpretation of the replacing function of all the other planning tools, attributed to the park plan by the Italian legislation. The general purpose of this approach is to foster self-governance patterns of the Gran Sasso Laga Park, directly involving members of the communities that live and act in the protected area. The latter is conceptualized as a Socio-Cultural-Ecological System (SCES), that is, as a complex of (human) social relations mediated through interactions with non-human entities (both biological  human and non-biological). More precisely, it is intended as a SCES where the cooperative aspect of the above relationships is key. In reference to the interactions between human and non-human factors that characterize it, it could also be asserted that the cooperative SCES can be considered a landscape (sensu European Landscape Convention). Furthermore, since it is a system that includes humans as an eco-factor, it seems more appropriate to refer to it as eco-diversity than simply bio-diversity. In this sense, the process of co-planning and territorial co-design can be seen as an inherent part of the broader relationship dynamic between humans and the non-human elements of the environment, leading to the establishment of coevolutionary paths within the SCES. In other words, the continuous co-planning and co-design process has then necessarily been intended as a dynamic, flexible, and adaptive way to manage the resources and envision territorial evolution.

This innovative approach has been fitted into the existing institutional and regulatory framework of Italy’s environmental planning, which, on the other hand, is really rigid and unwilling to rapid changes. Several issues arose during the long-lasting procedures that have been needed in order to achieve the final approval of the park plan, much of them related to the reluctance of many institutional actors, representing different NUTS levels, to agree upon a plan proposal that leaves a lot of space to the local subjects for the implementation of its provisions and the achievement of the objectives. A key element that supported the approval of the park plan by the three Regions in which the park spans has been the highlighting of the potential of such a dynamic planning to quickly respond to specific local issues avoiding the need to fulfill a comprehensive revision of the whole plan. Moreover, the agreement tools through which the co-planning and territorial co-design process could be implemented have been linked to some objectives of the Biodiversity National Strategy in the monitoring of the park plan effectiveness provided in the Strategic Environmental Assessment. Thus, the worth of the theoretical approach has been demonstrated, even if its empirical application still remains mostly unexpressed due to several factors, starting from the unwillingness of the Park Authority to trigger the process of co-planning and co-design of the territory.