I Contratti di costa quali strumenti innovativi di gestione integrata delle zone costiere

This research is dedicated to the theme of integrated management of coastal zones and aims at showing the inadequacy of traditional administrative governance instruments in consideration of the human activities carried out on coastal zones, in comparison with innovative and partecipative governance models, such as coastal contracts.The protection and the sustainable management of coastal zones represents a matter of great concern that, since the 1980’s, has resulted in a different methodological approach to implement the sustainable development’s principle through the integrated of environmental, economic and social resources.The research analyses, at first, the traditional administrative instruments highlighting the condition of substantial separation between the typical sectors of maritime property management, urban planning and landscape discipline, and the fragmentation between statal, regional, and local competences and the implementation tools. This approach, as authoritatively observed, has so far produced disappointing results and the need to implement an organic protection action have prevailed, in line with the Protocol on Integrated Management of Mediterranean Coastal Areas. The Protocol requires a profound reconsideration of the coastal area, and a holistic approach to the issues of protection and sustanaible uses in coastal areas, overcoming the traditional administrative model articulated, as mentioned above, for separeted administrative areas. This new interdisciplinary approach is being implemented, relatively recently, through orderly, adaptive and participatory models, which stand side by side - without replacing - to the traditional planning tools of applicable urban planning. These tools are called "coastal contracts" and it will be the goal of this research to demonstrate their enormous potential as possible models for implementing local integrated coastal zone management policies.