The Karst district-Distretto del Carso
The project regards the Italian and Slovenian Karst area as a homogeneous territorial entity and aims at establishing joint targeted planning initiatives to enhance the natural Karst environment. In this sense, Karst is regarded as a contact area for the implementation of sustainable development programmes and policies aimed at improving the quality of the local population’s life, the environment and the cross-border territory, while taking into account the available human resources and the socio-economic and environmental features of the local territory. Specifically, the projects intends to set up a Joint Working Table bringing together the institutional actors involved, so as to strengthen existing networks of relations among those in charge of territorial planning and the use/optimization of public funding; economic operators are also called to participate, in order to outline a common vision that is organic, uniform and shared of the various problems and the potential for development of Karst. The project also entails the identification of strategies and administrative instruments contributing to a joint environmental planning in the field of water services, road networks, infrastructures, routes and trails, and telematic networks to benefit the local inhabitants and authorities, in order to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. Lastly, a feasibility study is carried out to evaluate the possibility to set up a joint body charged with the coordinated management and administration of the territory. The project will conclude with the drawing up of an “Agreement to establish the crossborder partnership for the development of Karst”, signed by fourteen Italian and Slovenian subjects (the Provinces of Trieste and Gorizia, 11 Municipalities and Agencies for the Local Development of Karst and Brkini), which represents the formal commitment to the implementation of cross-border cooperation projects in the framework of Programming Period 2007-2013.