#governance multilivello
The 2014–2020 Partnership Agreement introduced numerous new result indicators across various areas of environmental policy (such as landslide and flood risk, water body quality, air quality, and biodiversity protection), committing to their regular updating and systematic availability at the regional level. Having detailed statistical information is in fact an essential requirement for improving the effectiveness and quality of public action, monitoring its developments over time, and assessing its impacts.
To achieve these goals, it is necessary to strengthen knowledge of the territories. For this purpose, ISPRA, in collaboration with the Evaluation and Analysis Unit for Programming (NUVAP-DPCoe) of the Department for Cohesion Policies, Presidency of the Council of Ministers, and the Agenzia per la Coesione Territoriale, proposed a multi-year project (2018–2023) called “Environmental Statistics for Cohesion Policies 2014–2020.” ISPRA is the beneficiary and implementing body within the framework of the PON Governance and Institutional Capacity 2014–2020.
The project aims specifically to expand the set of territorial indicators currently provided by official environmental statistics, meeting on one hand the new international data requirements (e.g., environmentally relevant SDG indicators) and at the same time aligning the availability of data and indicators with the information needs of national and local public policy planners and implementers. It also seeks to improve the territorial granularity and timeliness of ISPRA’s project-relevant environmental indicators.
The project’s action strategy is based on the central role of the Institute, which has among its institutional duties the development and publication of environmental data and indicators in order to produce and disseminate environmental information.
In detail, ISPRA will implement a series of primarily methodological initiatives to ensure the development of environmental indicators that are useful and functional for the objectives of the PON—i.e., more timely and territorially granular—beyond what the Institute is normally required to produce, always in accordance with the methodological standards typical of official statistics.
Operationally, the project—whose scientific and operational content was defined in cooperation with the Agency for Territorial Cohesion and the Evaluation and Analysis Unit for Programming of the Department for Cohesion Policies—is structured into four lines of activity aimed at improving and expanding the supply of environmental statistics. Specifically, three are focused on the development of indicators (the core of the project), and one is a cross-cutting activity dedicated to disseminating results:
- Updating data and indicators from the 2014–2020 Partnership Agreement at regional and sub-regional levels;
- Defining, quantifying, and publishing new indicators, also linked to international statistics and/or supporting those selected for the 2014–2020 Partnership Agreement;
- Defining and quantifying indicators at the municipal or sub-municipal scale for subsequent reprocessing according to functional territorial partitions (PON Metro, National Strategy for Inner Areas, etc.);
- Disseminating results and participating in the national and international debate.
Data, metadata, and indicators—mainly referring to air pollution, air and water quality, coastal protection, land consumption and fragmentation, contaminated site management, biodiversity, quality of urban waste management services, and the environmental impact of production sectors—will be published through ISPRA’s communication channels. A specific section for the project will be created on the institutional page dedicated to the Environmental Data Yearbook, which will include open-format files. These will also be published in the “Database of Territorial Indicators for Development Policies” managed by ISTAT, which is responsible for the project activities under #pongov "Territorial and Sectoral Statistical Information for Cohesion Policies 2014–2020,” a project that is both complementary and parallel to the ISPRA project.