Press release
Creation of the Northern Adriatic Transitional Areas Charter
On 12 June, the three Northern Adriatic Regions (Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Emilia Romagna) will meet to develop optimal solutions for conserving and enhancing the value of the area's natural and cultural resources.
On 12 June 2010, a new system for conserving lagoon and delta ecosystems in the Northern Adriatic Regions will be created. In a meeting at Thetis’ headquarters in the Venice Arsenal hosted by Marino Zorzato, Vice President of the Veneto Region, experts from Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Emilia Romagna will meet to draft the Transitional Areas Charter.
The charter represents a strong commitment to using optimal methods, based on the concept of the “coevolution” of natural and developed areas, to sustainably develop the stretch of shoreline that begins in Ravenna, passes through the Po Delta and the lagoons in Veneto and Friuli, and ends in Aquileia and Trieste.
The “Northern Adriatic Transitional Areas Charter” has two important governing principles:
• The use of methods that recognize the importance of the local culture and the area’s natural beauty when identifying, reconciling and resolving issues in the region;
• A commitment to seeking optimal solutions. These will be complex solutions as they must conserve natural and cultural resources while simultaneously making use of these same resources; specifically, the needs of fishing, agriculture, port development and tourism must be balanced with those of conserving protected areas subject to the regulations of the European network Natura 2000.
Due to the complexity of the habitats and the different ways that humans impact the region, the subject areas serve as "laboratories" in which the regional governments have initiated internationally important coordinated programmes to identify the best management practices. These programmes have been inspired by the ancient Venetian concept of a port – an area that seeks harmony between land and sea, protectiveness and openness, competition and collaboration, development and conservation; from now on this concept will be referred to as coevolution.
In addition to protecting increasingly fragile ecosystems, such management practices should lead to an economic welfare that is based on the natural and cultural assets of these unique coastal areas.
The engineering company Thetis intends to contribute to this pursuit of excellence in coastal environmental management, viewing it as an opportunity to increase its own expertise by working directly in the field. For this reason, Thetis has already made available to the three regions the knowledge and expertise the company has gained in more than a decade of managing the Venice lagoon through projects organized by the Venice Water Authority - Consorzio Venezia Nuova.
Thetis contributed to the creation of the Transitional Areas Charter as it naturally involved the utilization of methods that allow priority issues to be identified and made known, and the design of optimal solutions that meet the needs of both the human populations and the physical areas that support them.
Thetis will use this work as a basis to continue developing an expertise that the company can eventually export to any coastal region in the world. Giovanni Cecconi, Director of Thetis’ Engineering Services Division, supervised the preparatory stages that have led to this important event.
On 12 June, the working draft for the Transitional Areas Charter will be distributed.
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