Side Event

The project SelfPAs (Self-financing Protected Areas): guidelines, tools, best-practice and guidance on how to improve their financial self-reliance.

Organizer
Federparchi - Italian Federation of Protected Areas

Date and Time
12 February 2008 13:15 - 14:45

Meeting
Second meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Protected Areas (WGPA 2)

Thanks to the variety of points of view and experiences that Federparchi and the other partner PAs have contributed with, a vast series of elements have emerged that have allowed the project to identify the “ingredients” that make the difference between a thriving PA and a PA trying to survive. At the core of the results stands the realisation that, regardless of the type of self-financing mechanism selected, success is possible only if the PA has been able to achieve the necessary institutional “weight” to negotiate on levelled ground with other public or private organisations on its territory and beyond. How to obtain this result ? This is the main question SefPAs is addressing and which will be a matter of discussion during the event. Therefore, the main event objective is to create awareness about the difficulties PAs are facing to achieve an increasing level of influence despite the many obstacles in their everyday internal operation and initiate a debate on the role of PAs in economic development, at the local and country level. The key themes identified for discussion are: 1)Outsourcing (providing PAs with the tools required to achieve their mandate); 2) Economic valuation of ecosystem services (quantifying the indirect economic contribution of PAs); 3) Marketing (PAs pivotal role in the socio-economic development of the territory thanks to its hybrid nature and technical know-how); 4) Lessons for Europe (Implications for the future funding of the Natura 2000 Network) Indicative Programme: 1. Introductory speech 2.Technical session including presentations on all the aspects mentioned above; 3. Workshop : Towards potential solutions