Monitoring 2012

ISPRA's two-yearly monitoring of the transposition of the concepts of connectivity and ecological network within the planning tools at different administrative levels enters its second phase, after the 2010 monitoring.

The monitoring is aimed at verifying the quantity and quality of the instruments at the provincial level as well as at expanding to new administrative levels (Regions, Municipalities and Protected Areas).

The results of the work, related to the provincial level, were included in the update works of the indicator "Implementation of the ecological network in the ordinary planning", already present in the Environmental Data Yearbook edited by ISPRA in 2009, 2010 and 2012.

The ecological network in the planning at provincial-level

The Working Group and the Focal Points

The monitoring was carried out through the establishment of a focal points network (FP), whose members are gathered in a national working group (WG) coordinated by ISPRA, which has been entrusted with the preparation, validation and sharing of a data collection card and of the analysis of the plans with the processing of useful information. The FP are representatives of provincial and regional administrations, ARPA, park authorities, universities, research institutes, professionals, who for work, research or institutional competence deal with connectivity and
ecological networks and have a specific knowledge of the territory and of the planning instruments that they voluntarily monitor.

The establishment of the WG also had the goal of creating a permanent
network of stakeholders and skills (administrative, professional and
scientific) in order to monitor the state of the art (both theoretical
and practical) and the experiences related to the issue of ecological
connectivity, with the aim of contributing to the definition of instruments and to the growth of sustainable activities.

The data collection card
The data collection card consists of 30 questions aimed at investigating various issues including the relationship between the ecological network and the plan, the role of the ecological network within the plan, the characteristics of the ecological network, the spatial elements constituting the ecological network , measures and instruments of implementation of the ecologica network, the use of indicators and monitoring provided, the co-planning.

The card has been designed so that it could be filled up on-line, with the specific objective of facilitating the activities of the focal points, but also to ensure the highest quality and reliability of the data entered.

The survey sample
The sample of plans investigated is constituted by:

• 15 Plans at regional level,
• 41 Plans at provincial level,
• 11 plans at municipal level,
• 13 Plans of protected areas or Natura 2000 site.

For the regional and provincial level, the sample was considered representative and useful, therefore, to extrapolate trends. For the municipal level and the protected areas the number of subjects in the sample was not considered statistically significant. For this reason ISPRA has created a focus with the specific purpose of testing the validity of the data collection card and also to have a first set of data.

Shown below we report the complete processing of the data collected, divided by the different administrative levels investigated:

• Regional level (pdf - ita)
• Provincial level (pdf - ita)
• Municipal level (pdf - ita)
• Protected areas and Natura 2000 sites (pdf - ita).

A critical examination of some of the results of such monitoring shall be published in the journal Retícula No. 3, available at the following link: