Germana Citarella
Valorizzazione turistica dei territori creativi protetti
Abstract: Tourism Enhancement of Creative Protected Areas
Nowadays protected natural areas represent one of the indispensable instruments for the defence of biodiversity. For a long time a conservative view has prevailed in Italy: the aim of the local political administration had to be the unaltered maintenance of the aesthetic, historical, artistic value of the natural resources. Gradually we moved to consider the protected areas not as a limitation, as a constraint to the development of the area, but as a source of competitive advantage for the same. They are considered the keystone on which to build a model of territorial organization, able to balance the need for protection of biodiversity with that of socio-economic development and to provide local communities alternative sources of income (Marangon, Tempesta e Visentin, 2004). It is possible to argue that tourism plays a crucial role within the protected areas: this means investing more in form of tourism that could be called “alternative”. In particular, the creative tourism can be easily adapted to the physical and social structure of the areas: it is able to integrate with the cultural reality of destinations, it does not alter the biodiversity and local identities and it can positively contribute to a healthy recovery of the customs, peculiarities and environmental values of protected natural areas. The spread of this important niche market represents a valuable opportunity to prevent the globalization and standardization of supply, trough building local capacity as a part of a development model in which the environmental, social and economic compatibility is determined to be the determining element for a balanced and productive with places. The present contribution aims to outline the main characteristics of creative tourism in protected natural areas. They may represent important levers of change for a local development, capable of ensuring the needs of various stakeholder, through the achievement of joint decisions based on the principles of sustainability and protection of biodiversity.
Keywords: protected area, ecosystem, biodiversity, creative tourism, sustainable development.
GEOTEMA_49_09_Citarella
