Upscaling nature restoration in Italy: barriers and facilitators

The new Nature Restoration Regulation (EU) 2024/1991 (NRR) sets ambitious objectives to begin revitalizing the EU’s degraded ecosystems by 2030. However, the structure of the NRR leaves Member States with a broad margin of discretion to pursue these targets within the context of their governance arrangements. In a state like Italy, this means that key powers to implement the NRR are delegated to regional and sub-regional authorities. This misalignment between targets at a Member State level and the subnational authorities with the power to realize them may give rise to implementation challenges. To understand what governance barriers currently exist to nature restoration in Italy, we adopted a socio-legal study design based on a qualitative study consisting in semi-structured interviews with researchers and professionals with experience in restoration projects in Italy. Interviews gathered practitioners’ views on topics including relations with public authorities, bureaucracy, the impact of funding requirements, access to legal or practical support, and relations with the public. The results not only allow us to map, for the first time, the existing governance barriers facing restoration practitioners in Italy, but to also identify facilitators, that is, the strategies they deploy to overcome these barriers, such as building social capital and working with multidisciplinary project teams. Interview outcomes are analysed in the context of existing literature on biodiversity restoration governance. From this, conclusions are drawn about legal reforms and policy recommendations are offered to assist in more effectively implementing the NRR.