ROME (ITALPRESS) – The “States General of Italian Protected Areas” will be held in Rome on Dec. 17 and 18. Organized by the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security, in collaboration with Federparchi-Europarc Italia, the two-day event will be attended by environmental organizations, park authorities, local authorities, tourism operators, the world of research and universities, military bodies, government representatives and politicians, along with the Minister of the Environment and Energy Security, Gilberto Pichetto, and Undersecretary Claudio Barbaro. The event, organized ten years after the last time, will take place at the National Library in Rome. “The States General represent an important moment of reflection and planning for the future of Italy’s protected areas, with a view to balancing the necessary needs of environmental protection with those of sustainable economic development,” said Minister Pichetto. “It will be two days of in-depth discussion with the main stakeholders in the sector,” the minister added, “with the shared goal of modernizing policies on the subject, in order to better preserve and enhance our extraordinary natural heritage. “In Italy there are about 1049 protected areas made up as follows: 24 National Parks; 30 Marine Protected Areas (the Pelagos sanctuary and 2 underwater parks); 149 State Nature Reserves; 149 Regional Parks; 450 Regional Reserves; and 5 Geomining Parks. To these must be added other national and regional protected areas, Natura 2000 sites, Ramsar sites, UNESCO MAB reserves, and SAC areas. “Italy,” explains Undersecretary for the Environment and Energy Security, also with responsibility for Protected Areas, Claudio Barbaro, “is one of the top countries in the world for biodiversity, with a high number of protected areas, which have never been put into a system: to do this, we need to rethink Law 394 in a similarly systemic way. “The States General will be an opportunity to gather suggestions, criticalities, proposals and needs of those who manage protected areas, and then imagine together a system. In these two years of government, I have interfaced with different operators of protected areas, and if there is one thing we all agree on, it is that the Framework Law on Protected Areas, 394, needs to be amended. The goal for 2025 is not just to merely renew and update, but to move from an atomized, fragmented and divided management system to a network system,” the undersecretary adds.
– Photo Ministry of Environment and Energy Security press office –
(ITALPRESS).
