A governance proposal for the Sardinian Geopark

The Historical Environmental Geological Park of Sardinia (Geopark) has been recognized by UNESCO in 1998 as a high expression of mining culture. Based in the Sulcis-Iglesiente lead-zinc old mining district, in one of the geologically older regions of Italy, the Park consists of eight areas, belonging to 81 different municipalities spread in the whole Sardinia, for a total of about 3500 km². The multifaceted articulation of the Geopark confers the uniqueness to the whole landscape-environmental system of Sardinia. During all the years of the management of the GeoPark we saw a complex and contradictory regulatory apparatus from which the relative statute was born, to renew objectives and administrative rules in the various levels. In this paper the authors - starting from the first interpretations of the mining landscape and the subsequent research curated and financed by the Geopark (scientific coordinator P. Mistretta, 2012) - have as their objective the study of the procedure aimed at the government through its landscape. With these itents the authors want to propose a reading in two aspects. The first is a careful reorganization of the knowledges. This work is done through the rereading of the first interpretations of the places formulated by P. Mistretta, M. Lo Monaco (1974) who, after 40 years, remain still. The authors, starting from this consolidated story, focused their attention on the Italian territory on the integrity of its landscape, according to a model of higher-level planning and at the same time consistent with the municipal town planning. The second aspect is to operate a coordinated management with the environmental remediation initiatives of the IGEA S.p.A., owner of the real estate assets of the Geopark. The need for clarity is much simpler, but even greater is the ability to manage the most congruous governance. And in this sense IGEA participates in the formation of the Strategic Plan in order to collimate in a unitary form towards common horizons.