Why Italy is cutting funding to national parks
Environment — di Simone Santi
Protected areas and the Social Climate Plan: the climate in Italy is anything but good, at precisely the moment it is needed most...
Why Italy is cutting funding to national parks
Protected areas and the Social Climate Plan: the climate in Italy is anything but good, at precisely the moment it is needed most...
As Europe records record temperatures and extreme heat waves are putting cities and territories to the test, Italy is cutting funds to protected natural areas at the very height of the season when these bastions are needed most.
The cuts to protected areas
The Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security has reportedly communicated to national parks, state nature reserves and marine protected areas a reduction in transfers for the current financial year. The cut (which was provided for in the 2026 Budget Law) is not uniform but varies from body to body: overall it stands at around 23 per cent of the funds allocated last year, with peaks in some national parks exceeding 700,000 euros. The alarm has been raised by nine environmental organisations, including WWF Italia, Greenpeace Italia and Legambiente, who describe it as "another harsh blow to Italian nature".
Le aree protette sono fondamentali per il nostro Paese, ma il Ministero dell'ambiente ha deciso di tagliare i fondi a loro destinati.
Noi però, insieme ad altre associazioni, non ci stiamo👇
wwf.it/pandanews/ambi…
Noi però, insieme ad altre associazioni, non ci stiamo👇
wwf.it/pandanews/ambi…
The problem is not only the scale of the reduction, but the timing. Managing bodies have already committed, if not already spent, resources allocated on the basis of the previous year's forecasts, and having a quarter of their budget cut in June means jeopardising activities that become crucial in summer: wildfire prevention, territorial surveillance, public access, maintenance. All functions that, paradoxically, are precisely what would be needed to respond to — or help prevent the causes of — the extreme heat we are experiencing in these weeks.
The contrast with European objectives is stark: the European Union, through the Nature Restoration Law, calls for the effective protection of 30 per cent of territory, on land and at sea, by 2030. Italy, instead of strengthening the tools to get there, is cutting their resources.
The regions are not all moving in the same direction
If the national picture shows more than a few shadows, the situation at regional level is uneven, with examples pointing in opposite directions.
In Emilia-Romagna, the region has allocated 1.2 million euros for 2026 earmarked for parks and biodiversity: the funds will be used to acquire new natural areas — around 30 hectares in the Parco della Vena del Gesso Romagnola — and to restore trails and facilities across various protected areas in the region.
The situation in the Marche is quite the opposite, where Goletta Verde awarded a black flag to the Five-Year Plan for protected areas 2026–2030 approved by the regional government: according to Legambiente, the plan includes neither new terrestrial protected areas nor new financial resources, and crucially leaves the sea out entirely, despite the Adriatic being a particularly fragile biodiversity hotspot. According to Legambiente, the funds allocated amount to just 0.04 per cent of the regional budget.
#Parchi e #forestazione. Biodiversità, habitat e paesaggi: al via due bandi finanziati dalla Regione con 2 milioni di euro per la tutela di boschi e foreste. La #notizia 👉 regioneer.it/BandoParchi-Gi…
In Tuscany, finally, the region has opened a call for applications to support voluntary environmental wardens, with a contribution of 3,000 euros for each body that activates or strengthens its territorial monitoring service: a limited intervention, but one that moves in the direction of reinforcing oversight of protected areas.
The case of the Social Climate Plan
The picture is no better on the climate justice front. The Piano Sociale per il Clima, the instrument that should manage over 9.3 billion euros to support vulnerable households and businesses through the energy transition, should have been submitted to Brussels a year ago, yet at the moment there is still no word of it. The plan is linked to ETS2, the emissions trading system that will apply to buildings and transport: it is designed to prevent the cost of the transition from falling disproportionately on those with fewer resources. Here too, civil society environmental organisations are now denouncing a year of no updates and no transparency regarding the draft under discussion between the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security and the European Commission.
#Pianosociale per il #Clima, per le associazioni ritardi inaccettabili
ecodallecitta.it/piano-sociale-…
ecodallecitta.it/piano-sociale-…
The Social Climate Fund is supposed to bring in "additional" money on top of what the state already spends on social policies (energy bills, housing, mobility for families in difficulty). The risk flagged by the organisations is that the government, instead of using these European billions to fund new and additional measures, will use them to cover expenditure it would have had to bear anyway from its own budget.