The failure of policies often depends by the unidirectional decision-making mechanisms and the delegation of the elaboration of territorial policies that prevent the assumption of a sense of collective responsibility by the actors involved. Thus, EU authority increasingly recognise that effective water policies require bottom-up, inclusive decision-making and growing awareness. River contracts (RCs) are voluntary agreements between stakeholders for managing water bodies, a tool aimed at applying a new governance system for sustainable development through an integrated approach between local development and environmental protection, based on a participatory process. RCs explicit objectives are mainly related to mitigation and prevention of hydrogeological risk, restoration of ecosystems, waterscapes enhancement. Therefore bringing water awareness into communities it is equally a priority and also favoring ‘hydrophilic encounters’ for exploring fluvial senses of place. _x000D_
This research, rooted on a variety of methods and activities realized to support the Regional RCs Board of Friuli Venezia Giulia Region (north-east Italy), investigates if RCs could be considered participatory processes developed to achieve co-designed outcomes or simply territorial management projects that objectify the river. The ongoing research-action is studying the RCs’ potential to be tools not only for water management but also for developing a community-based sense of place and responsibility towards water bodies. To be so, RC has to be implemented as a process rather than a project and has to involve all actors connected to water body (included the water body itself), considering also space and time as relevant variables. This enables citizens to shift from simply being passive recipients of policies to becoming actual community of practice which take the co-responsibility to address the damage caused to water bodies, putting water at the centre of its identity and sense of place._x000D_
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Anna Brusarosco, Francesco Visentin
Dipartimento di Lingue e letterature, comunicazione, formazione e società – DILL, Università degli studi di Udine, Udine, Italy

 
ID Abstract: 312