Sustainable Local Governance and Forest Management:The New Challenges for Forest Common properties in the Veneto Region (Italian Eastern Alps)

The paper will first of all describe the history and the present situation of FCPs in Italy, with special focus on the Alpine areas. Then, it will present the preliminary results of a recent survey of existing FCPs in the Veneto Region, mostly focused on the property structure and of the land and resource uses by the right-holders community. Finally, it will discuss some recent challenges that these well-rooted traditional institutions have to face today, when dealing with new global policy arenas, emerging demands and policy tools to foster sustainable management of natural resources. We argue that the traditional tools which the communities have given themselves to manage their resources might be today not always sufficient to adapt to external change and disturbances, thus sometime leading to non resilient social-ecological systems. We support this claim through examples of conflicts recently occurred in the decision-making process of some Alpine common properties.