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• To what degree and extent is the priority objective in your case study being achieved?
The legislation and executive regulations crucial for reaching the priority objective in the
Egadi MPA have been adopted only in the last two years. For this reason the management
process which should bring to the maintaining or restoration to favourable conservation status
of conservation features of the Egadi MPA is only in its initial stage.

• To what degree are primary and secondary conflicts being addressed? If there are unsolved
conflicts, how does that affect the achievement of the priority objective?
The LFMP and the regulations of the Egadi MPA contain measures only recently adopted that
are expected to attenuate both intra-sectoral (small scale fishery vs trawling) and inter-sectoral
(conservation vs fisheries) conflicts. The recent Egadi Islands Management Plan, which
includes the local Natura 2000 sites are expected to contribute to the reduction of the
conservation vs tourism conflict. As reported in section 3, several conflicts still exist among
the main activities going on in the Egadi MPA. The unsolved conflicts represent an important
deterrent for the achievement of the primary objective because they involve politicians, trade
associations and managers in a sort of “game of roles” aimed at defending the interests of
single sectors. These unsolved conflicts are also producing negative effects even on the new
bottom-up governance approach adopted for the re-zonation of the MPA (source: local
newspaper articles).
• Is there any noticeable trend in terms of effectiveness (is the situation being improved,
worsened, or stable)?
Thanks to the recent legislative tools adopted and according to the stakeholders perception
recorded in the interviews,, the trend of the first 20 years of MPA management is now slowly
being inverted with a likely improvement in the governance approach.

Specific elements of governance approaches that lead to high or low effectiveness in achieving
the priority objective will be explored in detail in the next section. However, please do briefly
outline and discuss the main reasons/factors (could be part of the context, policy framework,
governance approach etc) that contribute to high or low effectiveness in achieving the priority
objective.

The lack of an MPA management plan of the Egadi MPA hampers the fulfilment of the priority
objective under any governance system. Without such a plan there is no clearly set objective and the
measures contained in the MPA regulations are often confused; furthermore neither monitoring nor
assessment of reserve effect exist to date. Some interviewed stakeholders stated that the absence of
well defined and universally accepted objectives is the main deterrent against a socio-economic
development related to the presence of the MPA. They also denoted the absence of a governance
approach for an integrated management of the Egadi archipelago as a whole (see above). However,
some positive elements of governance have been recently adopted, like e.g. the creation of a
governance body inside the Trapani LFMP that includes many Egadi stakeholders, including the MPA
director (Fig. 7). This is the first attempt to an integrated approach to the management of the Egadi
archipelago and it might contribute to higher effectiveness in achieving the priority objective.
However no strategic governance approach has been adopted to coordinate all the existing spatial-
based initiatives related to nature conservation, fisheries and tourism (Fig. 3). The lack of an
overarching coordinating body hampers the achievement of the priority objective.

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