Building on international good practices and lessons learned, the OECD proposes an integrated approach to GI and NbS. This approach considers all the main trade-offs concerning GI and NbS and proposes solutions to integrate them in the planning, appraisal, financing, procurement, and maintenance of infrastructure investments. It is based on six pillars:

Italy has long-standing experience with environmental protection and the management of ecological networks. Regulatory frameworks and instruments for spatial planning already consider the potential impacts of territorial development on the environment and ecological networks to limit the expected negative impacts and reinforce positive ones. Moreover, GI and NbS are increasingly mentioned in key policy documents and strategies, including the National Biodiversity Strategy 2030. Nonetheless, more needs to be done if the country is to become a frontrunner in the adoption of a GI-integrated approach to infrastructure governance. While some isolated good practices exist at the subnational level, a more consistent adoption of these two instruments across the whole national territory is needed.

GI and NbS involve different levels of government, which often creates hurdles in their implementation. At the central level, the main administrations involved (MIT, the Ministry of Environment and Energy Security and the Ministry of Culture) tend to have different roles and responsibilities, which sometimes overlap. Moreover, in the absence of central-level guidance, subnational authorities (regions, municipalities, and metropolitan cities) are often responsible for integrating these two instruments in territorial development and infrastructure projects, with some regions and cities performing better than others.

At the project level, there are different tools in place to integrate environmental considerations in infrastructure planning and design, in project appraisal, and in the financing and delivery of public investment projects. However, these instruments often fail to promote the use of GI and NbS and could be further refined to integrate considerations of biodiversity and ecosystem protection and restoration.

Despite MIT’s recent efforts to promote sustainability in public investment decisions, there is room for improvement for Italy to integrate GI in spatial planning and ensure a more widespread uptake of NbS in infrastructure projects across the national territory. Based on the challenges identified and the lessons learned from the selected case studies (e.g. the railway line Bicocca-Catenanuova, the metro line M4 in Milan, the Nodo Verde (“Green Node”) in Bari, and the Ridracoli Dam in Emilia-Romagna), the OECD has developed a series of recommendations to help the Ministry promote GI and NbS across all levels of government: