Just over a year ago, the Gran Paradiso National Park and the Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park celebrated their first century of life. An important milestone, which however arrived at a moment of stasis for Italian parks. After a season of great political and social interest in these instruments, culminating with Framework Law 394 of 1991, Italy has come to have 24 National Parks, 148 Regional Parks and 29 Marine Protected Areas. But since the first years of the new millennium this process has essentially stopped and, even in public discourse, the very idea of establishing a Park no longer generates enthusiasm and debate as it did in the 80s and 90s of the last century.
With the aim of analyzing this particular historical moment and reflecting on new visions, a very interesting book, entitled “The future of Parks”co-written by Enzo Valbonesi And Oscar Bandini.
Enzo Valbonesi is an institution for those who deal with parks in Italy, one of the protagonists of that fertile season which saw the birth of many protected areas in our country. Valbonesi, in fact, was the first President of the National Park of the Casentinesi Forests, Monte Falterona and Campigna, as well as one of the founders of Federparchi (the Federation of Italian Parks), before being appointed Head of the Parks and Forest Resources Service of the Emilia Region -Romagna.
We contacted him to address this broad and complex topic together, asking him first of all why a book that has “future” in the title… actually starts from the past.
“The book is primarily aimed at fixing the political-administrative events that on the Romagna side preceded the establishment of the Park, first regional and then national”, Valbonesi told us, “it describes the stages to remember a history that otherwise risked disperse. Moreover, knowing the themes of the debate, its main protagonists and the reasons for the conflicts that marked those years can help us to reflect better, today, on the future of that Park, to be understood not so much or not only as an institutional entity with its own distinct purposes, but rather as a new tool for managing a special territory in the era of loss of biodiversity and the climate crisis”.
From the past to the future therefore, retracing what Valbonesi describes as “an adventure that began along an unprecedented path” but which, in his vision, has always conceived the Park as “a continuously evolving tool-process that walks on the legs of the communities”.
Community is a key word in the book. Of that period that preceded the creation of the Park of which he was President, in fact, according to Valbonesi Today, the hope and local protagonism that were at the basis of the project should be revived. A project that aimed to enhance natural resources, without altering them, but at the same time aiming to improve the quality of life of the populations, thus promoting an economic and social relaunch of the Apennine territory.
“Those hopes have faded today, because the establishment of the Park, just a few years after its birth, was interpreted as a point of arrival and not as a starting point”, explains Valbonesi with regret, entering the heart of the contents of the essay, a book that also brings with it very bitter but necessary reflections. “After the first period, characterized by the structuring of activities, there was no need to undertake the hardest and most complicated effort: that of promoting sustainable development and, with it, building its identity profile, putting the animation of local development at the centerin a fruitful relationship with the populations of the municipalities involved, in particular with the entrepreneurial forces and young people”.
These are themes, those just raised, obviously deeply felt by us at L’AltraMontagna, who were also very impressed by another key theme addressed in the book: self-referentiality. In a historical context very different from that of other countries, the Italian parks have built, according to Valbonesi, “a patchy identity”, without a coordinated direction between the central State and the Regions which it has tried to make up for, but only succeeding in part, Federparchi itself.
“The Parks, despite themselves, they inevitably ended up falling back into a state of isolation which pushed them towards a sort of self-referentiality“, explains the Author with disappointment, “and there is nothing worse, for subjects like the Parks, than closing in on themselves. A tendency, that of isolation, which is somewhat inherent in the nature of this special institute for land management, which is based on the one hand on its specialty and, on the other, on the logic of inside and outside. It had to be the task of national politics to establish an approach that went beyond the logic of the Parks as so many “besieged fortresses”to make them feel part of a network, in which everyone enhances their specific characteristics, but within a more general strategy”.
And instead, especially following the reform of Title V of the Constitution, the instruments created with the 1991 law to give continuity and organicity to inter-institutional dialogue have been abolished, such as the Joint Committee for Protected Areas and, consequently, the three-year programs in favor of the Parks. “From that moment it was every man for himself”underlines the Author, and the theme of self-referentiality, derived from here, has become one of the great problems of current affairs.
“In the book we talk about self-referentiality in reference to the trend that has established itself in the management of parks by individual bodies, especially national ones, on their own initiative,” explains Valbonesi, “unfortunately, an almost proprietary concept is being imposed on the part of some Directors and Presidents, who entrust their legitimacy not so much to the dialogue and continuous relationship with local institutions, but rather to a sort of “blank delegation” from the Ministerial side. This leads to the distancing of many parks from the expectations and excitement of local communities, who in many cases experience the managing bodies with indifference, or worse, with distrust and detachment.”.
It should be remembered that the parks, in some internal areas of the country full of enormous social problems, had been seen, at least by a part of the population, as opportunities for rebirth. “Local populations often no longer perceived the importance of their forests, the wealth of fauna or the landscape”, highlights Valbonesi, “this is why, in my opinion, it was necessary to make the Parks perceived as truly innovative and useful entities to pursue protection as a way of valorisation, through an indissoluble and synergistic combination of actions for the success of Italian mountain parks. This has only been concretely determined in a few cases, also due to the lack of national policies towards mountain areas which should have underlined a particular specificity aimed at those territories that host the protected areas”.
The theme of the possible balance between protection and development is obviously central, but to pursue it we must go through countless and inevitable conflicts. Valbonesi has no doubts about this: “To reduce conflicts to a minimum, preventive action is needed, to be developed a right mix of regulatory regulations and demonstration activities that the Park itself must implementoffering private entrepreneurs opportunities that direct their work towards sustainability and focusing on quality. An example could be to enhance small local wood supply chains, accompanying owners towards modern forms of association and rational use of their forests. You can only escape from self-referentiality by getting your hands dirty! By building its own acceptability by going beyond a solely protectionist logic which, for those who manage it, is often a comfortable refuge”.
In particular, Valbonesi is keen to point out that this approach would be desirable precisely in protected areas of mountain areas: “In my opinion the Parks, in these territorial contexts, must not only regulate, control and at most promote the culture of education and knowledge of nature. These may be the prevailing missions of coastal parks, islands or river parks, but certainly not the only purposes of mountain parks”.
The vast majority of Italian parks, over 70%, concern mountain areas strongly marked by the problems of depopulation, the aging of the population, the emigration of young people, the rarefaction of services and businesses. Fortunately, not everywhere is the situation described by Valbonesi: generalizing is always wrong and it is important to know and also talk about the positive experiences gained in some territories. Having said this, however, the “Other Parks” imagined and described by Enzo Valbonesi and Oscar Bandini could really be a goal to aim for in the “Other Mountains” of the future. Rebuild one governance that goes in this direction, starting from a revision of Law 394/1991 in a modern key, could represent a common line of action to work on, creating synergies between multiple sensitivities, visions and interests.
Without wanting to find a “pre-packaged recipe” – an action that is always limiting in diversified and complex territories – we hope that, starting from this article and this book, an interesting debate can develop on our pages around the theme of protected mountain areas. In fact, it is a central topic for those who, like us, think that the High Lands could reveal themselves in the near future “a socio-environmental laboratory to experiment with good practices”thus transforming itself “from a place of the vanquished to a place of self-renewal” (from the Manifesto of L’AltraMontagna).
Parks could, perhaps should, be an integral part of this process.
Photo by Giordano Giacomini (Wikimedia Commons) and Luigi Torreggiani
