The self-government approach to the planning of the Gran Sasso Laga Park

Thanks to the substitutive function of every other planning tool, recognised by law for any Italian park plan, the Gran Sasso Laga National Park Plan was conceived, within the Italian system of hierarchical cascade planning, as vice versa a non hierarchical coordination tool of a co-planning process based mainly on self-government patterns of the communities that live and act in the park territory. Such a co-planning process can be considered as an inherent part of the broader co-evolutionary dynamics of relationships between humans mediated by non-human elements of the environment, according to a specific interpretation of Socio-Ecological Systems (SES), which we in turn interpret as Socio-Cultural-Ecological Systems (SCES), recognising humans as eco-factors and referring to the eco-diversity of SES/SCES rather than simply their biodiversity.