Changing Discourses, Practices and Spaces of Coexistence: Perspectives for the Environmental Regeneration of the Ofanto River Basin

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore how spaces of coexistence are created and emulated in river basin planning and management. The starting-point is the recognition of the crucial concept of integration and its different meanings with regard to the need to overcome fragmentation of knowledge and actions. The article provides an in-depth analysis of discourses and practices taking place in the Ofanto river basin, southern Italy, in the light of social-economic and administrative innovation that is spreading through this area. The analysis reveals the emergence of communities of practices, in which local actors' concepts are debated and hybridized. They are giving rise to new spaces of coexistence and a new discourse on the Ofanto river basin environmental regeneration.

Keywords:

• Integrated river basin planning and management
• environmental crisis
• environmental regeneration
• spaces of knowing
• communities of practices
• cognitive mapping

Acknowledgements

This article is prepared as part of the Research Project ‘Making the most of environmental assets and cultural heritage of the Ofanto Valley’ (Cluster C29 - Cultural Heritage), financed by the Italian Ministry of University and Research and co-ordinated by Nicola Maiellaro, National Research Council, Bari. The authors owe a particular debt to Abdul Khakee for the thoughtful suggestions and invaluable help that enabled this article to be made. The authors also wish to express their gratitude to the Editor and three anonymous referees for their detailed and helpful comments.

Notes

1. The lower valley on which this article focuses includes six municipalities (1115 94 sq km): Barletta, Canosa, Cerignola, Trinitapoli, Margherita di Savoia and San Ferdinando di Puglia, with a total population of 222 229 inhabitants (ISTAT-National Institute of Statistics, 2002).

2. The most important changes were introduced by the Law 59/1997 on administrative decentralization and the reform of Title V of the Constitution (Law 3/2001). The former changed the division of powers between state, regional authorities and local authorities from a hierarchical to a horizontal organization; the latter changed the division of legislative jurisdiction.

3. Territorial Employment Pacts (TEPs) were launched as a pilot measure at the Amsterdam Summit by the European Union. Their implementation followed the usual approach of Community pilot projects, but sought a rapid linkup with the mainstream of the Structural Funds. They are a form of agreement between public authorities, private organizations, and the European Union. The TEPs use locally-generated resources in their areas to generate a bottom-up approach to development and an integrated and innovative strategy, implemented by an expanded partnership as representative as possible of most important elements of local civil society (http://www.inforegio.cec.eu.int/pacts/EN/index.html). In Italy, besides 10 TEPs financed by the EU, 230 Territorial Pacts were financed by the National Government and signed between 1998 and 2001, two-thirds of which are located in southern Italy.

4. Conservation instruments mainly derive from the implementation of the following international conventions and Community directives: The Washington Convention on the international trade of endangered species of wild flora and fauna (CITES); The Bern Convention on wildlife in Europe; The ‘Habitat’ Directive 92/43/EEC.

5. They are: the Director of the Agency for Development and Labour, the Director of the Department for the Management of the irrigation Systems of the Consorzio di Bonifica della Capitanata, representatives of local governments, members of the technical committee set up by the Apulian Regional Government responsible for the institution of the regional protected areas, professionals responsible for carrying out the studies for the institution of the Ofanto protected area, members of the Committee for the Institution of the Ofanto River Park.

6. Yet we are fully aware of the importance of the ‘reality’ of the physical world when dealing with environmental resources, with their delicate equilibriums of ecological cycles and current burden of pollution.

7. “Practice theory integrates the actor, his beliefs and values, his resources and his external environment in one ‘activity system’, in which social, individual and material aspects are interdependent. The focus in such activity systems is on the way the different elements relate to each other rather than on the elements itself. … the concept of practice presupposes the social (Hajer & Wagenaar, 2003, pp. 25–26).

8. They were: two members of the Committee for the Institution of the Ofanto River Park (Figures 2 and 3), the former is a leader of a local environmentalist NGO; the latter is a scholar in environmental disciplines; the Director of the Department for the Management of the Irrigation Systems of the Consorzio di Bonifica della Capitanata (Figure 4); the Director of the Agency for Development and Labour (Figure 5).

9. The most important are municipalities, industrial, trade and employers' associations, professional groups, unions and bank representatives.

10. In particular, this programme reflects a transnational agenda for creating a European network for the in situ management and conservation of Europe's precious fauna and flora species and habitats under the terms of the EC Habitats Directive 92/43.

11. “To be more precise, there are no generally accepted rules and norms according to which policy making and politics are to be conducted … The institutional void proceeds from the premise of a discrepancy between the existing institutional order and the actual practice of policy making” (Hajer, 2003b, p. 176).