Landscape Protection: A Solid Institutional Partnership for an Innovative Training Proposal

06/12/2006 - With Law 14of January 9th 2006, the European Landscape Convention (ETS) has been formally integrated into Italian legislation, thus triggering highly innovative conceptual and disciplinary mechanisms in reference both to the strategies and tools of landscape planning and programming. This leads to the need to adapt professional competencies in order to acknowledge these innovations and their concrete implementation and experimentation. The European Landscape Convention which strongly adheres to the principle of subsidiarity, and the Code on Cultural Heritage and Landscape (law decree 42 of 22nd January 2004) emphasize the importance of the PA promotion of vocational updating and training to develop a radical renewal in knowledge, protection and management of landscapes.
In such a scenario and in the ambit of an Agreement signed by Formez with the Directorate General for Emilia Romagna of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, training activities have been recently started up for the staff from the local entities of the provinces of Bologna, Ferrara and Rimini. This intervention is very complex and involves numerous institutional partners: the ministry, the Emilia-Romagna region, the Directorate General for Territorial Programming and Mobility System which has entrusted Oikos with the realization of a section of a training course, complementary to the one carried out by Formez, as well as ANCI which deals with the territorial network of Local Independent Bodies. The training project is certainly one of the first experiments of the implementation of article 6 of ETS and aims to become pilot experience to be shaped and proposed to other Italian regions.
During 2007 a second edition should follow to this first edition and will involve the realization of a training course for the other Emilia Romagna provinces as well. It will also benefit from the results of the monitoring system, as well as the responses from participants owing to the activation of a reserved online community. For the complexity of the institutional system of promotion as well as the ambitious cultural and methodological choices, the project is the perfect candidate as an operational “best practice” to be submitted to the attention of other regional Italian administrations and the broader European networks of the regions which are interested in fully implementing the European Convention.
By Anna Gammaldi