Strategie di valorizzazione della filiera foresta-legno in Calabria: il punto di vista dei portatori d'interessi

Strategies for the promotion of the forest-wood chain in Calabria (southern Italy): the stakeholders' point ofview. In Italy, the value of bioeconomy is 251 billion EUR and more than 1.7 million of workforce is employed inthis sector. The forest-wood chain cover about 15% of total value of bioeconomy. The consultation draft ofItalian Bioeconomy Strategy was presented on November 22, 2016. This document identifies three macro-sectors (agrifood, marine bioeconomy, forestry and biobased industry) with the respective objectives and priorities. In addition, some Italian regions are organizing to devise a regional strategy detailing the key points ofthe EU Bioeconomy Strategy and Italian Bioeconomy Strategy in accordance with local peculiarities. In order todevelop a regional strategy for the forest sector it is important to investigate the social demands and needsinvolving the local stakeholders. The aim of the study is to investigate the stakeholders' opinions of CalabriaRegion (Italy) about the priorities of forest-wood chain to include in the future regional bioeconomy strategy. The stakeholders' opinions were collected through the face-to-face administration of a structured questionnaire to 99 local stakeholders. The respondents assessed the importance of a set of objectives aimed toenhance the forest-wood chain at local level (economic exploitation of wood products; diffusion of forest certification; orientation of production to market demand; coordination of forest-wood-energy chain's actors;implementation of environmental and cultural forest values; improvement of the level of mechanization inwood processing; improvement of the efficiency of forestry workers). In addition, the respondents assessedthe capacity of some specific activities to achieve the above mentioned objectives. The collected data wereused to define two strategies aimed to enhance the forest-wood chain in Calabria Region. The results showthat for the interviewed stakeholders the main three objectives are: the implementation of environmental andcultural forest values, the improvement of the efficiency of forestry workers, and the diffusion of forest certification. In addition, the stakeholders highlighted the importance of the activities of environmental education for the citizens and the professional training courses for the forest operators. Finally, the diffusion of forest certification is a key issue for the interviewed stakeholders. This issue can be achieved facilitating the access of the certified products to the market and creating a chain-of-custody system for the wood products