Common strategies and best practices to IMprove the transnational PRotection of ECOsystem integrity and services - ImPrEco

IMPRECO main objective is to enhance the safeguarding of ecosystem services and tackle their environmental vulnerability strengthening the potential of protected areas in biodiversity and ecosystems conservation through their transnational networking. The Project Partners are daily facing the challenge of Eco-system (ES) conservation and experiencing the relationship between the ES and the Socioeconomic-system (SoES) which produces flows of benefits from the ES to the SoES but also drivers of change from the SoES to the ES. Human and natural pressures are undermining the health of ES and their capacity to provide services fundamental for living conditions of people in the area. A common challenge for the pj area, is on one side, to maintain, enhance and restore ES and their functionality and, on the other, to integrate the ES in local development plans. The pj addresses such common challenges applying the so called ESS approach but in an innovative way: unleashing Protected Areas (PA) potential as laboratories to test innovative measures for ES conservation and transferring them in the surrounding territories through the application of a quadruple helix approach. Safeguarding ES requires a comprehensive approach to be effective: by converging efforts at the local level, which requires the involvement of PA managers, public bodies, civil society, academia, economic operators and by sharing efforts on transnational ground since ES are ecologically interconnected and threatened by pressures generated at such level. Therefore, the pj will establish a transnational network composed by PAs and local stakeholders and support it with a common strategy for the ES management and conservation together with a set of innovative governing tools. Thanks to such pj outputs and their active involvement in the pj implementation through a community based management system, the commitment and capacities of quadruple helix actors to tackle threats on ES and apply measures for ES management and safeguarding will be increased. Project was funded by Interreg Adrion Programme 2014-24. M. Pinna leaded the Research Unit of University of Salento Research and coordinated the international team involved in the WP1.