News and Events

Seminars, focus groups, interviews and coloured post-it how to re-start the dialogue between stakeholders and policy-makers across the coastal community off the Capo Gallo ed Isola delle Femmine Marine Protected area
Alan Deidun - November 2018

As foreseen by Activity 5.1 in Harmony Project that will produce several associated deliverables (e.g. a stakeholders map) and a final Output 5.6 "Meeting/interviews with stakeholder and policy makers to transfer the project’s guidelines (e.g. focus group)".

Last Friday, 21th September a multi-stakeholders meeting on the governance and priorities at the Capo Gallo-Isola delle Femmine MPA took place, entitled “A pesca di sinergie in supporto a nuovi processi decisionali: diamo voce alle comunità costiere delle aree marine protette” (HARMONY Project – Cooperation Programme di Interreg Italia-Malta).

In the framework of HARMONY project, the Laboratorio di Ecologia, Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra e del Mare, Università di Palermo led by Prof. Gianluca Sarà, in collaboration with the Project partners has organised a multi-stakeholder full afternoon meeting.

An hot long afternoon, full of activities that facilitated the interaction among parties. Stakeholders belonging to 10 different stakeholders groups (from fishermen to retailers, students, teachers and researchers) have had the chance to reflect on their needs and priorities. Everything needed to start a new MPA era moving from a bottom-up approach weighting the role of society and looking for a more sustainable presence of human activities and to inform a more effective local governance. Starting with seminars passing through interviews and focus group and gaming, stakeholders and end-user have quickly realised the dimension of their priorities, highlighting potential conflict to be solved in the future. The presence of policy makers will allow speeding up the process through an harmonisation of human activities in the area respecting the naturalistic value.