Territorial governance and collaborative planning practices: Lessons learned from a case of a River, Lake and Coastal Contract in Lazio Region, Italy.

The contribution aims at discussing planning tools that fail because they promise integrated approaches without creating effective transformation or improvement on the governance system. These practices formally draw references, terms, and techniques from collaborative planning for facing complex challenges but in the end, they are not able to integrate institutions, actors, and policies nor to achieve tangible and long-term impacts. Based on the research experience about the River, Lake, and Coastal Contract “Marta-BolsenaTarquinia”, in the Lazio Region, the contribution outlines how in these kinds of practices, “integration” is merely translated as a composition of different actors and institutions, instead of aiming at a deeper collaboration of competencies, knowledge, and powers. Moreover, within the complex but also controversial debate on the relevance of collaborative practices to the effectiveness of planning tools, this River Contract shows how participatory processes could allow the creation of arenas for stakeholders engagement at different levels by facilitating multiactor interactions and negotiated processes aiming at sustainable development, but their weak impact on the governance system in itself limited any potentiality and transformative power. From one side, the contribution argues that despite the ambitious premises, this integrated planning tool is mostly used only for the resolution of contingent issues leaning towards management arrangements, then not producing changes in existing governance dynamics. From the other, it provides learning opportunities for different use - so far frequently too instrumental and simplified - of collaborative practices by showing as: a) integrated and multidisciplinary vision presupposes a complex change to switch from a ‘management’ coalition to cooperative governance; b) redistribution of responsibilities, powers, and knowledge requires coproducing strategies and visions for dealing with uncertainty, challenges, and inequalities. Last but not least, the contribution intends to share and debate these findings also by comparing and discussing similar European experiences and perspectives