Bridging Biodiversity Conservation Objectives with Landscape Planning Through Green Infrastructures: A Case Study from Sardinia, Italy

The definition of Green Infrastructure (GI) provided by the European Commission in its 2013 Communication “Green Infrastructure: Enhancing Europe’s Natural Capital” regards GI as a network having the Natura 2000 sites at its core, able of delivering numerous ecosystem services, and “strategically planned”, stressing the importance of GI in integrating ecological connectivity, biodiversity conservation, and multi-functionality of ecosystems. Consequently, the spatial identification and management of GI is an important issue in planning, and especially in landscape planning as understood in the European Landscape Convention. Building on a previous work by Arcidiacono et al. (2016), this paper tests a methodology whereby the spatial configuration of a GI is identified in relation to four aspects (conservation value, natural value, recreation value, anthropic heritage) which summarize the multifaceted character of landscape. The methodology is tested in the Italian region of Sardinia, by applying it in the coastal landscape units defined in the Regional Landscape Plan currently in force which overlap the metropolitan area of Cagliari. We argue that this methodology can effectively help integrate biodiversity conservation objectives into spatial planning by implementing article 10 of the Habitats Directive, stating that relevant features of the landscape should be managed so as to improve the ecological coherence of the Natura 2000 network