Procedural justice in protected areas: the case study of Circeo National Park, Italy

The embracing of participation in environmental decision-making is widely established in international policy as an important factor for the success of protected areas. In addition, the combination of institutional and people’s participation is fundamental to the pursuit of sustainability and the resolution of environmental conflicts and tensions. Public administrations should implement democratic values, such as justice and moderation, guarantee transparency and access to environmental information, and promote a sense of community and civil society to ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making. The omission of public participation in decision-making processes, environmental management, or policy-making is considered procedural injustice. The research analyses the concept of procedural justice and participatory processes in the protected areas context, where participation of local stakeholders in the governance is widely recognized as a precondition for effective protected areas’ management and is an essential element to enhancing their use as a tool for biodiversity conservation and sustainable resource use. Furthermore, the study focuses on the case of an Italian Protected Area, Circeo National Park, situated along the Tyrrhenian coast, XX km south of Rome, in the Province of Latina. Applying a mixedmethods approach, composed of grey literature analysis and questionnaires from 350 citizens, the aims to analyse the theoretical and practical level of participation and inclusion in existing decisionmaking and environmental tension resolution processes. The grey literature analysis describes the Park decision-making process, environmental tensions, such as agricultural, hydrogeological and tourism resources and tensions between local and national governance frameworks, and initiatives proposed by the Park Authority to resolve them. The questionnaires analyse the degree of community participation in the Park’s initiatives, the communication level of these events, the level of trust in the Park Authority, and future availability to contribute in participatory processes. This research contributes to current debates on the dialogue among actors and their participation (or exclusion) in decisionmaking processes (procedural justice), necessary for a transformation towards sustainability. The success of protected areas' strategies may lie in the ability of managers to reconcile biodiversity conservation goals with social, environmental and economic issues of local communities: without dialogue, accessible and fully shared information these objectives can’t be realized.