The PTRA Alpine Valleys: Opportunities for economic and sustainable development

The PTRA investigates in more detail the socio- economic and infrastructural objectives to pursue, can dictate the criteria necessary for procuring and allocating resources and provide precise and coor- dinated instructions for governing the territory, also with reference to the estimates of settlements, the forms of environmental compensation and recovery and the regulations for the actions in that territory. The PTRA is therefore the instrument for territorial governance to ensure implementing an effective synergy between the strategies of economic and social development and to safeguard environmen- tal sustainability for a portion of territory, taking a proactive approach in the protection and enhance- ment of the environmental components and the landscape. The key elements of the PTRA “Alpine Valleys” about to be approved, whose effective- ness as a project and for governance will be verified in the coming years, are: • defining a territorial project that forms a refer- ence scheme as a platform for active projects, not imposed but proposed • the implementation of the plan’s guidelines has the nature of legitimising choices and of potential effectiveness stemming from the fact of being the outcome of a process of co- planning (hard work and not without difficult moments, as in all true exchanges) • the objectives and the actions are fairly simple and clear, and the implementation does not rely on conforming but on performing • the construction of projects and the active monitoring of the plan are a necessary precon- dition for the effective implementation of deci- sions; in this context of significant thematic complexity between players, it is important to note that appropriate political and technical leadership will be essential • the recognition from the DGRegio of the European Union for the ‘good practices’ of the PTRA “Alpine Valleys” in terms of multilevel governance is a fertile environment for an ac- tive discussion with other European contexts, also in a complementary manner with the more specific projects that can be activated, starting with the Alpine Space programme.