Governance
Governance and the articulation of knowledge form strategic guidelines based on managing conflicts of individual interest and collective issues. therefore, the Smilo island partner stakeholders will ensure:
SHARED TERRITORIAL PROJECTS
Create, make operational and sustain spaces for meeting, discussing and managing conflicts, recognising and protecting everyone’s property rights and use rights – including traditional and customary rights. These places will help to define and clearly outline responsibilities and relations between stakeholders, while building on the local structure – “bottom-up” approach – citizens, users, intermediary bodies (cooperatives, associations, trade unions), land owners, economic actors including companies, experts, communities, municipalities, counties, regions, states.
LOBBYING
Create opportunities, conditions and spaces for the stakeholders involved in the island to have a tribune and visibility in order to defend and promote their area in a structured way to local and national governments and international organisations.
KNOWLEDGES DIALOGUE
Identify and characterise local knowledge, know-how and practices that were found to have a positive impact on the environment, in order to spread them and integrate them not only to scientific approaches – inventories, maps, sectoral studies – but also to local decision-making and planning choices. Sharing, disseminating and transmitting the results of scientific studies and surveys carried out on the island so that the information is known and shared with local stakeholders and does not remain the property of experts outside the territory, using it only occasionally. Be vigilant regarding the tangible outcomes of studies and their follow-up.
PLANNING AND SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT
Planning and spatial development in land and at sea are major strategic orientations. To achieve sustainability objectives and a balance of uses on islands, the island committees will implement:
“SWOAT” APPROACH
Collectively and systematically identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats the island faces; resource availability, shortages, its state of preservation and enhancement, with the aim of better defining local potential and progression margins. Define with precision the equilibrium and breaking points between productive activities that depend on island resources and natural environment protection and ecological thresholds not to be crossed, according to types of human activities.
CARRYING CAPACITIES ASSESSMENT
Determine the island’s real carrying capacities, i.e. capacities defined not only by physical and ecological criteria, but which integrate what is socially and culturally acceptable, in order to preserve the spirit of the place, and the notion of seasonality.
ANTICIPATION
Anticipate future pressures on resources and environments rather than managing collateral damage at the end of the line, which requires more human, technical, and financial investments. Identify practical and appropriate island-scale solutions before environmental disruption.
DIVERSIFICATION
Systematically pursue a policy of diversifying activities over the year, favouring a “mix” rather than concentrating on a single resource (agricultural, energetic, etc.), to avoid a situation of dependency.
FOOTPRINT REDUCTION
Support the development or maintaining of human activities – agriculture, fishing, industry, tourism – with low environmental footprints, that respect, protect and value natural environments and which help fight climate change, while ensuring the necessary benefits for local communities. Adapt and evolve economic activities that pollute and are harmful to the environment and support their transition by raising awareness, properly enforcing regulatory measures and with technical innovation.
SCALING TO THE SIZE OF THE ISLAND
Use technical and technological innovations adapted to the scale of the island – in terms of infrastructure sizing, proven to be beneficial for inhabitants and users – analysing the benefits – with a “cost-benefit” approach – on medium and long term, and anticipating issues related to maintaining and upholding facilities. When applicable and relevant to the island – in terms of investment, costs, scale of intervention – promote technologies that contribute to autonomy in the circular economy principle – energy, water, waste management – and to reducing dependence on the continent.
INTEGRATED LAND/SEA APPROACH
Move from a sectoral approach to an integrated approach to handle the island as a whole; break the boundaries of management and discipline between land and sea, which are so closely connected from a physical, chemical and biological point of view.
MAINTAINING NATURAL AREAS
Promote balanced management of the area and anticipate the pressures exerted on the different types of environments. Maintain natural buffer zones to limit sprawling, ensure ecological continuity and fauna/flora corridors, define boundaries between productive and non-productive areas, etc.