Potenzialità di sviluppo sostenibile nelle aree protette: il caso del parco dell’Etna

In the protected area of the Etna territory, of remarkable dimension and which dominates the pedemountain belt, environmental resources have clearly a leading importance. The agriculture and food as well as the tourist sectors, managed according to eco-friendly and product differentiation criteria, are the only ones capable of generating development (sustainable too). This volcanic area is very rich in environmental resources (natural capital) - that is resources which completely lack of human interventions – and in environmental resources with anthropic interventions that reveal the historical human intervention to settle, for agricultural purpose, the volcanic territory that has been subject to structural modifications (anthropic capital). The starting of a process of sustainable tourism development, grounded on the demand from the outside, requires the preservation of the natural and anthropic capital (here strongly differentiated), which should be carried out, besides for ethical purposes, also for avoiding the weakening of these essential non-reproducible resources, which could result from a typology of tourism not compatible with them and from an excessive dimension of this activity. Moreover, the relative identification of the whole-chain product should proceed from the identification of the typology of tourist more compatible with such resources and from the choice of services consistent with the respective preferences. As for the agricultural sector, the production guidance must be addressed toward those varieties most compatible with the local pedoclimatic conditions, taking into account that the deriving product identity can produce positive results also under the hypothesis of a relatively lower productivity of the respective processes. The agriculture and food as well as the tourist growth potentials are mainly due to a substantial access to markets outside the region and especially to foreign ones. This is essentially supported by the specificities of the territory, if they enter the production function with the due emphasis, giving rise to relevant product differentiation. It is necessary to identify policies for the achievement of more substantial identities of the two sectors’ respective products. It can be expected a remarkable change in local institutions’ policies, which should be addressed toward the focalization on predefined system objectives, concerning product and process identification, promotion, marketing. These objectives could be achieved by the firm (of small dimension, with limited organizational resources, isolated) by means of cooperative relations between institutions and the firm, which, on their own, could generate in the latter the perception of the benefits obtainable from meeting system objectives and, thus, favor the creation of an inter-firm cooperative relation (social capital), typical of the firms’ organizational networks, which increases its performance.