La valutazione delle performance ambientali delle aree protette attraverso un modello di analisi economico-ambientale

During the past few decade protected areas will become increasingly important in the preservation effort. At the same time, the need to evaluate protected area management effectiveness will become increasingly well recognised at international level because of declaration of protected areas does not always result in their adequate protection as 2010 Countdown target would be done. After Conference on Environment and Development – Convention on Biological Diversity (Rio de Janeiro,1992), the role of protected areas for biodiversity conservation is now well understood both at international and European scale. Since 1990 a lot of methodologies have been developed to assess protected areas management effectiveness, many of them tailored to particular regions or habitats. The analysis presented in this P.h.D research aims to propose a accountability methodology to assess management effectiveness of protected areas in Italy and also to call for their good business practices and transparency in reporting. Management effectiveness evaluation is achieved by a set of selected indicators from a thriving international bibliographic analysis methodologies and strategies underpinning the management policies, treaties and conventions on protected areas. Indicators are grouped in 4 dimensions that are: Environment, Economy, Governance and Society. Every dimension is related with special topics. Society, Economy and Governance are Sustainability management tools; they can generate processes affecting sustainability evolution. For this reason, assessment of Administrators management effectiveness must take into consideration biodiversity maintenance without neglecting social, economic and governance aspects as well as human needs. By row data analysis 243 specific Composite Indicators are derived and put into their respective dimensions. These Composite Indicators constitute Italian Protected Areas Database (IPA). Finally, Cluster Analysis was applied to national parks territory analysis. In so doing, homogeneous groups are founded related to their environmental, economic, social and governance traits, as well as related to their territorial scale, both municipal and parks level.