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• Combining top-down role of state and bottom-up participative approaches;
• Inter-sectoral integration and related power issues including compensation (in emerging MSP
framework);
• Cross-border issues between different countries;
• Environmental and social justice issues and related rights of appeal;
• Influence of different knowledges and of uncertainty in decision-making. eg different claims
to knowledge, and how uncertainty plays out in decision-making, establishing cause-effect
relationships.

Please refer to the list of cross-cutting themes and sub-themes in Appendix IV, for suggestions and
examples as to what this section might include. It is envisaged that the five cross-cutting themes
above will be applied to all case studies and sub-case studies, while the sub-themes will be
applied where they are relevant.

The Egadi MPA is a complex system of spatially-based sectoral initiatives which aim at nature
conservation and sustainable use of natural resources in the area.
The map showing the management initiatives dealing with conservation and fisheries (Fig. 3),
suggests that there is a mosaic of initiatives spatially overlapping but disconnected from an
institutional and legislative aspect. Many important natural, legislative and management elements
contribute at filling the mosaic but nobody really knows how to organize them in order to preserve the
marine environment while exploiting the natural and cultural resources in fair and sustainable way.
The institutional framework involves a Municipality, a Province, two Departments of the Sicilian
Government and the Government itself, besides two national Ministries. The legislative framework is
even more complex due to the peculiar autonomous status of Sicily which has jurisdictional power on
fisheries but not on MPAs, which depend from the Ministry of the Environment. To make things more
complicated, the Sicilian government has been charged to designate the Natura 2000 marine sites,
which were made coincident with the Sicilian MPAs. A consistent contribute to the entropy of this
system has been given by the NFMP and LFMP, which refer to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and
Forests and to the Sicilian Department of Fisheries, respectively.
As regards the management only the MPA and the LFMP have a management body while it is not
clear who should manage the Natura 2000 sites. The Natura 2000 management plans and the LFMP
have been approved only recently.
The Egadi MPA is only one element of such complex system but it also suffers an inefficient
governance approach. Established in 1991, it started to really work only in 2010 when the first
regulations were approved and a new director was appointed. Regulations and a novel bottom-up
approach started during the MPA re-zonation proposal, have been much appreciated by local
stakeholder. Moreover, the interviews highlighted the necessity of rules and of a management plan that
set how to meet the objectives of the MPA and how to individuate the measures necessary to obtain
efficient nature protection in the MPA.
The new management approach of the MPA, joined to the Natura 2000 management plans and to the
LFMP, can be the base on which building an alternative scenario of more effective governance in the
Egadi MPA. As discussed in the incentives section, the above management plans, plus the MPA
regulations and some legislation contain a mixed of incentives which could concretely support the
setup of an effective governance. Actually, the incentive mechanism is the only one that is allowing
the application of some conservation measures (point 5.1). But, in order to let the incentives exert their
maximum efficiency, it is necessary to have a clear management structure which joins and coordinates
all the activities aimed at nature conservation, already contained in the regulations and management
plans existing in the area.
A hypothetic yet realistic governance scenario needs some changes to the management approach
adopted in the Egadi.

• In the Egadi area all initiatives related to nature conservation have been realized through top-
down processes. Such non-participative approach caused a general opposition to the initiatives

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