Strategic Environmental Assessment of a Landscape Plan: A Case Study Concerning Sardinia, an Italian Region

A fundamental issue concerning strategic planning processes is represented by the recognition and integration of the local communities expectations into regional planning policies, since their early stages of development. Information and participation are necessary conditions for the sustainability of the planning processes, as it is stated by the Directive n. 42/2001/EC of the European Union, on the assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment (the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive). The Directive was incorporated in the Italian legislation by the first and second titles of the second part of the Legislative Decree no. 152/2006. The Local Agenda 21 programmes of the United Nations which directly derive from the Habitat II Conference and the Habitat Agenda, the European Union regulations on the Eco Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) certificates, and the strategic environmental assessment procedures for the European Union structural funds plans and programmes also consider public participation fundamental for the effectiveness of plans, programmes and policies. The recognition and integration of the local communities expectations into regional planning policies imply connecting planning choices to preferences, shared needs of the members of these communities. These people should not only be identified with the set of stakeholders who define the system of strong interests tied to land use and transformation and who design and implement regional planning policies, in cooperation with the public administration, but also with formal and informal organizations through which citizens may eventually focus and express their requirements, aspirations, needs and expectations, concerning the present and future organization of the urban space. Regional and local planning processes are important and significant grounds to analyze public policies from the participatory point of view, in a SEA-based framework. The planning activity of the regional administration of Sardinia (Italy) is characterized by a deep change that followed the approval of the Regional Landscape Plan (RLP) (Resolution of the Regional Council of Sardinia no. 36/7 of September 5, 2006 entitled L.R. n. 8 del 25.11.2004, articolo 1, comma 1. Approvazione del Piano Paesaggistico Primo ambito omogeneo [Regional Law no. 8 of November 25, 2004, article 1, paragraph 1. Approval of the Landscape Plan First homogeneous piece of territory]). The RLP, which is ruled by the National Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape (National Law Enacted by Decree no. 42/2004, the Urbani Code, from the last name of the Minister who proposed the law), establishes the directions for future Sardinian regional planning. The actual sectoral, province and city plans, and plans for protected areas, have to be changed in order to follow these directions. The adjustment process could be conflictual, since cities, provinces, and the administrative offices of protected areas may possibly disagree with the regional administration about the rules established by the RLP. This paper develops a discussion around two issues concerning public participation in the implementation process of the Sardinian RLP. The first issue is about how privileged stakeholders see the RLP and assess its possible success or failure, by focussing primarily on the extent to which integration of different stakeholders was looked for in the making of the plan and what the likely consequences of this degree of participation are. Some professionals who had participated in the preparation of the plan were asked to provide an informed insight on how the issues of horizontal cooperation, vertical integration, and inclusiveness had been addressed and whether the level of participation achieved was satisfactory, having regard at the type of plan and at its aims. All the interviews were carried out in Italian, and took the form of one-to-one semi-structured interviews. This method was regarded as appropriate because it allows researchers to conduct the interviews in a flexible way and to tailor their questions to the interviewees and to their responses to previous questions, provided that the aim of the research is always taken into consideration and a general and robust plan of enquiry has previously been set out. Some general warm-up questions about the kind of development pursued by the plan, which advocates a balance between social needs, economic activities and environment (article 3 of the planning implementation code), were followed by more specific questions about the role played by municipalities, provinces, and private sector during the preparation of the plan. It emerged that the regional administration was the only responsible for the definition of aims and objectives of the plan, while lower tiers of government and other stakeholders were only involved in informative meetings shortly before the approval of the plan. This choice was explained, and sometimes justified, on different grounds, some of which are particularly challenging. Is a regional government the only institution responsible for the definition of regional policies and rules? Does a plan have to look for public participation only when it directly affects land use and transformation? As for the implementation, the interviewees were stimulated to talk about possible consequences of inconsistencies between the RLP and local master plans; in doing so, possible future conflicts between the regional and the municipal administrations were also explored. It appeared that institutional coordination has been moved from the plan preparation to its implementation, in the form of adjustment of the master plans, and of a technical and political mech=anism aimed at approving specific projects and development p=lans by means of an assessment carried out on a case-by-case basis. Secondly, we consider the local communities and discuss how these may eventually participate in the im=plementation process of the RLP, that is, will they coop=erate or fight? This assessment starts from the analysis of the results of an empirical study on conflictual issues c=oncerning the Sardinian RLP analyzed through Multicriteria analysis (MCA) and Contingent valuation (CV) presente=d at the 47th ERSA Congress (Zoppi, 2007). The di=sparities brought out by the application of these two method=s clearly points to the need to have experts for defining th=e criteria to be used. The criteria for the MCA and CV applications need to be identified by experts on urban, regional and environmental planning, economists, geologists an=d others. This is a precondition for the evaluation process to begin. It is evident that the choice of the criteria is decisive for the ranking of the scenarios, since the incl=usion/exclusion of a criterion can potentially reverse the= results of the classification procedures. Of course, if =the choice of the criteria were open to public discussion and participation, it would be possible to implement decision processes on public policies where experts and the local c=ommunity would share and possibly build common expectations on the future of their city environment, as the experience of Sustainable Seattle (1998) has shown. FinallyC we compare the results concerning the privileged stakeholders and the local communities, and identify some lessons that can be learned from the intermix of the two approaches. Abstract disponibile al seguente indirizzo su Internet: http://www.liv.ac.uk/ersa2008/conf/rsa98.pl?conf=ersa2008&type=showabstr&nr=746 [ultimo accesso: 14 Luglio 2012]. Il testo completo del saggio è di 27 pp. ed è stato presentato nella Session 10.Y: Sustainability and environmental management