Governance of Sustainable Tourism in a Vast Area Surrounding a National Park

AbstractPolicies for governance have become a key question within the sustainability paradigm. Researchers can play an important role in supporting the action of policymakers and responsible agencies involved in managing the sustainability of fragile venues, such as protected areas when pressed for tourism purposes. The Asinara National Park shows the peculiarity to be located in a small and non-inhabited island, close to the big Italian Island of Sardinia. The specific site is a very interesting case study for rethinking the importance of the so called collaborative governance, in comparison to the traditional top-down policy usually adopted in protected areas. The case study well illustrates opportunities and difficulties that the managing agency has to face and, in the same time, cannot avoid, if it will successfully run a governance of sustainability which can be eventually also the motor of the economy of the surrounding neighborhoods. The authors present a possible future local stakeholder partnerships based on structured governance. The findings are in line with the literature debate on how the local governance can be used to support sustainable tourism