Assessing the applicability of a bottom-up or top-down approach for effective management of a coastal lagoon area

The coastal lagoon of Lesina, is situated on the Italian southern Adriatic coast, in a primarily rural area. Agriculture is the primary economic activity, while the lagoon supports only small scale fisheries and one aquafarm enterprise. However, the lagoon ecological state shows a slow but constant deterioration. In this study, we a) assess the causes for this decline; b) evaluate why the existing regulations have failed to protect the environment from this deterioration; c) explore the potential for community involvement in the management of the lagoon; d) formulate suggestions for developing a management plan that will ensure the preservation of the lagoon and the well-being of the community, according to a shared stakeholders' vision. For this purpose, available social, economic and physical data were gathered, organized and successively used to identify the causes for the lagoon deterioration. We found that the main causes are: increased discharge of sediments and nutrients from inland activities; unmanaged fishing; loss of human capital; unclear regulations due to vertical and horizontal lack of coordination among authorities. Further, three workshops were conducted with local stakeholders to identify the multiple problems affecting the lagoon area and discuss possible shared solutions. The workshops highlighted that participants perceived the lagoon as an unexploited source of income, mostly in terms of nature based tourism, and suggested that negative externalities caused by the inland activities and mismanagement of the fishery sector should be accounted for by the authorities. However, the mapping of stakeholders indicates that the tourist sector in the area is not developed enough to effectively promote in a bottom-up fashion the development of a management plan of the lagoon area, which could encourage sustainable tourism by protecting the lagoon and generating economic development for the area.