Integrated Local Development in Coastal Areas: The Case of the “Stretto” Coast FLAG in Southern Italy

The importance of fisheries and their central role in creating strong relationships with the territories of some coastal communities has generated a revision process of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). With the EC Regulation 1198/2006, a specific axis in the European Fisheries Fund (EFF) has been inserted and, in particular, Article 45 of the EFF describes the promotion of local development through participatory processes, in order to understand better the real needs of an area. The Fishery Local Action Groups (FLAGs) have been introduced as governance systems involving a greater plurality of local actors for the realization of local development plans (LDPs) based on the valorization and diversification of the activities around the fisheries. The present study provides an analysis of the local development process experienced by the “Stretto” Coast FLAG in South Italy. The planning phase has been carried out through an integrated methodology that has facilitated the elaboration of a development strategy built on the basis of local knowledge and shared by the different partnership members. To this purpose, a decision-aid model was used in order to elicit and aggregate, the individual preferences related to priority measures and interventions to be included in the LDP. Later, the paper analyzes the implementation phase which was characterized by various delays and remodulations, that hindered the realization of several interventions initially planned in the LDP.