An Integrated Methodological Framework for the Definition of Local Development. Strategies for Fisheries Local Action Groups: an application to the Stretto Coast FLAG in South Italy

The programme 2007 – 2013 marks an important review process of UE’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), borrowing from the Leader Approach the typical features both of territorial and local development and bottom-up approaches. In the process of policy formulation we see, with the creation of the Fisheries Local Action Group (FLAGs), a greater involvement of the local actors coming from public, private and no-profit sphere. In particular, the socio- economic partnership of the FLAG is the governance system responsible of the definition of Local Development Plans (LDP). The goal of this study is to present an integrated methodology that may be utilized to facilitate the elaboration of a development strategy built on the basis of local knowledges and shared by all partnership members. In particular, the proposed planning process follows three main phases: territorial analysis, animation and concertation. A decision support system, based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process and a convergence process was used in order to elicit, and successively aggregate, the individual preferences related to priority measures and interventions, to be included in the LDP. The proposed methodology has been applied for the definition of the LDP of the Stretto Coast FLAG in South Italy allowing the definition of a development strategy shared by the partnership as a whole.