ITALY: Developing local development strategies for remote, peripheral areas - Trentino

The OECD Trento Centre for Local Development is working with the Autonomous Province of Trento and the Italian government’s Committee in charge of the National Strategy for Inner Areas.

Purpose of the project is to strengthen capacities to conceive and implement integrated local development strategies aimed at improving the quality of life and well-being of people and reversing demographic trends in ‘inner areas’ (sparsely populated areas and stranded communities isolated from large and medium-sized urban centres). The implications of the local development strategies encompass a range of policy domains, including education, health, accessibility, labour market and economic development.

Implementation period: February 2016 - December 2019

Target areas

The work initiated in 2016 to help design a strategy for the first pilot area of Tesino (Trento), which local development strategy was approved for funding in November 2017 and the corresponding Framework Financing Agreement signed in December 2018. Subsequently the project in 2017 has been widened in its scope to the inner area of Val di Sole, which local development strategy was approved for funding by the Italian government’s Committee for Inner Areas in April 2019 and the Framework Financing Agreement is planned to be approved by the end of June 2019.

Working components

This analysis serves as a background for:

Workshops with national and local stakeholders to share OECD experiences and case study analysis on local development planning, strategy formulation and priority setting, in particular dealing with rural local contexts;
Identification of recommendations for local strategies;
Seminars to exchange information and practices and develop capacities of stakeholders involved in the national Inner Areas strategy and OECD delegates facing similar issues.

The Trento Centre will extract lessons for the OECD from the Inner Areas strategy experience and disseminate through capacity building seminars and a working paper outlining main lessons learned.

Support work included so far:

A permanent working group operating through ad-hoc joint working sessions with Autonomous Province of Trento staff and relevant stakeholders on local development planning and strategy formulation;
Attendance to local meetings with the stakeholders for priority action setting in each of the target areas;
Draft documents review and recommendations;
Specific input provision along the process of strategy design;
Methodological support on technical strategy formulation methodology;
Participation in meetings and briefings with the national authority in charge of the coordination of the «National Strategy for Internal Areas»;
Case study analysis and networking with other relevant local experiences.

Outputs

November 2017: Approval of the Tesino inner area strategy

December 2018: Signature of Tesino Framework Financing Agreement

April 2019: Approval of the Val di Sole inner area strategy

By end June 2019: Planned signature of Val di Sole Framework Financing Agreement

Second semester 2019 onwards: full implementation of the two strategies

OECD Contact

Paolo Rosso

Links

Integrated local development