Success story of the day: WWF Italy
Civil Society
Story featured in the Made in Countdown 2010 publication
Action
Since economic resources and opportunities of intervention for biodiversity were limited,
WWF Italy launched an ambitious project on strategic planning on an eco-regional scale in 2004. The main points of this strategy included the adoption of a proactive approach instead of one based only on the conservation of the last natural areas. This envisaged a brave vision for the future: the greatest possible participation of all conservation actors belonging to the two homogeneous areas of the Central Mediterranean Eco-region and the Alps Eco-region; and the development of ambitious yet realistic conservation goals on a eco-regional scale to achieve the cooperation of all actors at national and supranational level.
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Before
At the end of the 90’s, even though considerable efforts were already being made in Italy to fight biodiversity decline, including with the creation of public and private protected areas, the crisis persisted and was getting worse. A constant process of transformation in the use of land, pollution, unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, and diffusion of alien species was underway. It was necessary to adopt a new approach to conservation and to develop more synergic intervention strategies, focused on definite and priority targets. WWF Italy started then to look with growing interest at conservations plans based on wider spatial and temporal scales than in the past. But this new strategy called for a multi-level synergy never experienced before, since intervention planning at national and supranational level had to result in action at local level. |
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Now
Biodiversity visions for the Alpine arch (Alps Eco-region) and for peninsular Italy (Central Mediterranean Eco-region) have set the basis for a more general process of decision sharing on the subject of nature conservation where a considerable number of partners are involved. This has also led to the finalisation of a memorandum of understanding between WWF Italy and the Italian Ministry of Environment for effective cooperation in the urgent definition of a National Strategy for Biodiversity in 2010. The eco-regional approach, which works through action plans at different levels, allowed in 2008 to bring together the central government and the Tuscany Region. These two have set up – with the technical and organisational support of WWF Italy – a pilot project for the definition of a “Regional Plan for Biodiversity” according to the draft National Strategy. |
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A specimen of Brown bear of the Appennine population (Ursus arctos
marsicanus) © WWF
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