CReIAMO PA: A Top-Down Process Towards the Sustainability of the Territory

by Alessio Ciotti | Oct 24, 2019 | The Urban Media Lab

The change that United Nation 2030 Agenda aims to create involves, among the others, Public Administrations. In this framework, the project CReIAMO PA operates to overcome the critical issues in the governance of environmental policies by accompanying the subjects involved in the changes and by combining the principles of protection and safeguard with those of development and competitiveness.

United Nation 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is an action program, signed by the 193 UN members, which includes 17 common objectives. They are set to be reached by 2030, aiming to solve crucial issues flowed from historical heritage and modern development. All these objectives, among which “sustainable cities and communities”, “gender equality” and “clean and accessible energy”, involve closely Regions and Metropolitan cities in Italy that so often are not able to cooperate in order to solve territorial problems. For this reason, Ministry of the Environment has developed a strategy that aims to address the issues related to strengthening administrative capacity, development of e-government and improving multilevel governance in order to overcome the fragmentation that exists today.

The CReIAMO PA Project is a part of this synergic action, that involves Italian Metropolitan Cities and Regions, with a view to increase technical skills in the following fields: project initiatives on environmental issues considered mandatory for Agenda, actions aimed at integrating specific assessment procedures, actions promoting Green Public Procurement (GPP). The GPP is an approach, promoted by European Commission, according to which Public Administrations integrate environmental criteria at all stages of purchasing processes, encouraging the diffusion of environmental technologies and the development of environmentally valid products. In this way, starting from Public Administration, the project seeks to create sustainable administrative bodies that are capable of making sustainable decisions for the benefit of territories.

Indeed, in the context of sustainability, a special care for coherence is necessary. An operator responsible for taking decision for a sustainable development of an area have to be conformed to the ideals on which it leads. The Ministry project aims to create a network of Regions and Cities, which the process of cooperating is able to speed up by conforming their territories to UN Agenda. CReIAMO PA offers to the involved parties, among which Public Administrations and other actors with environmental expertise, an opportunity to strengthen administrative and institutional capabilities as well as technical skills, aimed at improving PA management, multilevel governance and the ability to relate with stakeholders. The action plan provides training sessions alternated with on-the-job coaching. Moreover, more “systemic” actions are planned, with the purpose of enhancing the comparison between the territorial actors, that results in strengthening the planning and implementation of environmental policies. Consequently, Regions and Metropolitan Cities are expected to produce a sustainable strategy that looks forward, in the direction of circular economy and, which has a low impact on the territory and is made with education and all the other objectives of 2030 Agenda in mind.

The project is developed on 9 action lines that cover different objectives. In particular, Line 2 is finalized to support the integration of environmental sustainability objectives in administrative actions. The main purpose is to help the inclusion and the implementation of strategic system of 2030 Agenda at local and regional levels through a networking action that involves different levels of governance and non-institutional stakeholders that operate in the territory. Line 3 is about the expected results of the intervention. First, the integration of the agenda’s objectives needs to happen in national, regional and territorial policies, to give binding effect for the Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goals. Second, greater active involvement of central administrations in the process of implementing and monitoring of the 2030 Agenda is required for the sake of not restricting sustainable initiatives solely to the local level where they remain and stay simply as local best practices. Governmental and Ministerial levels must be reached. Finally, the objectives of the National Agenda 2030 implementation and national monitoring path should be shared with the Regions. Subsequently, it follows that in order to achieve the objectives set out, three areas of activity are addressed. – Involvement of central and regional institutions together with metropolitan areas and monitoring and reporting functions.

The National forum for Sustainable Development has been created by CReIAMO PA as a tool, to bring together and reunite, in the same space of confrontation, institutions and representatives of civil society. The purpose is to have a place where it is possible to bring out subjects and practices related with sustainability and to facilitate the meeting of public policies and social energies to be implemented in National Strategies for Sustainable Development (NSSD). The NSSD draws a blueprint focused on sustainability and it is a strategic framework for national and territorial policies. It involves the territory concerned and represents a road that each policymaker has to follow in the process of drafting the laws of future.

On 17th October, a meeting between Ministry of Environment and Metropolitan Cities took place in Rome. The meeting resulted in the development of a Strategy for Sustainable Development, for each Metropolitan City, which has to be compatible with the NSSD. The importance of creating a network was remarked in the meeting – the purpose of the network is to create a shared language, which reaches all the different levels in order to crate effective solutions. The method provided for both round tables open discussions and cooperation agreements. These agreements are fundamental because they mark an assumption of responsibility on stakeholders. An element of innovation is the characteristic that Ministry emphasised in the process of duplicating activities already in place. Indeed, the next step is to systematise these actions in the decision-making processes. Ultimately, all the pilot actions implemented by Metropolitan Cities have to respect the 13 URBACT criteria for an integrated pilot action in order to produce concrete sustainable results for an integrated society where all the actors work in harmony.

All in all, thanks to United Nations 2030 Agenda, the process of change is now involving several actors, starting from the highest levels of government, following the guidelines of senior experts such as URBACT. In this top-down process, where Institutions are working for putting us in condition to carry on the process they started, it is our responsibility to accept the invitation and suit their policies.

Picture retrieved via https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/news/communications-material/