Addressing Italy's extensive river fragmentation by building a network of environmental organisations, raising awareness among local authorities and the national government, and creating conditions for the development of concrete dam removal proposals, ultimately aiming to stimulate a national strategy for restoring river connectivity in Italy.
Damming across Italian watercourses has been extremely intense and widespread. The number of barriers to longitudinal connectivity is estimated to be more than 10k, of which over 500 are large dams. Thousands of new barriers have been built in the last 10-15 years. Similarly, lateral connectivity is hindered by tens of thousands of km of embankments and bank protections, whose location and extension are still not mapped in most regions. Thus, the great majority of Italian rivers are highly fragmented. Although some barriers play a strategic role (e.g., main reservoir hydropower schemes or key flood protection works), many barriers break the river continuum without providing any relevant socio-economic benefit.
However, despite the increasing global awareness of the benefits of restoring connectivity, removal measures remain extremely limited in Italy and concentrated in very few geographical areas. This lack of cases is linked to insufficient drivers, both bottom-up and top-down. A national strategy for restoring river connectivity is still lacking despite national legislation theoretically fostering natural retention measures as primary solutions for flood risk mitigation. The public demand for dam removal is also low due to insufficient general public awareness and lack of focus by the Italian media.
The role of sectoral organisations (such as environmental NGOs, local river committees, anglers, and white-water sports associations) could make a difference, given their widespread presence across the country (joint membership numbers over 1 million people). They are thus a key target of this project to unlock the existing potential, generate relevant local dam removal proposals and put pressure on public authorities.
| Project status | Completed |
|---|---|
| Project type | Enabling the dam removal movement |
| Country | Italy |
| Focal impact based activity | On-the-ground enabling activities in pilot catchments (at least 1 in each of the 7 Italian river basin districts), including training/test identification of longitudinal and lateral barriers and analysis of the potential for removal; work with networks of local authorities on integrating dam removal in their planning instruments. |
| Primary project outcome | Preliminary assessment of at least seven pilot catchments in terms of connectivity and intervention priorities; a national network of NGOs coordinatin.g to advocate for the restoration of river connectivity |
| Project timeline | August 2023 - September 2025 |
| Organisation | CIRF |
| Website | CIRF |
The project aims to ensure favourable conditions for developing local concrete proposals and large-scale strategies for restoring river connectivity in Italy.
The project team has identified the case studies in the Southern Apennines District (River Calore, Region Campania), in Sardinia (River Flumendosa), and Sicily (River Irminio).
The project is expected to create the conditions to foster more initiatives to restore free-flowing rivers, both led by local organisations and made possible by increased consideration of river connectivity within relevant planning instruments. The anticipated impact and outcomes include:
The project has successfully gathered a network of local environmental, angling, cultural organisations, that were trained on topics related to river connectivity and contributed to the selection of seven pilot rivers/catchments. For the most promising cases, the process will continue after the end of the project, to reach agreements, funding and appropriate design for their concrete removal.
Specific categories of local authorities, i.e., parks and municipalities, were involved through the project, in order to share knowledge and foster their active involvement in planning connectivity restoration actions. A key opportunity for this is represented by the Nature Restoration Regulation, and the due National Restoration plans due by September 2026.
However, despite the approval of the NRR, the national political context in which the project has developed has been extremely difficult. No actions or programmes to restore river connectivity, as part of the NRR obligations or of other legislative objectives, have been promoted; to the contrary, there has been a surge in projects for new barriers in rivers.
Therefore, a key focus of CIRF’s national advocacy activity, in collaboration with other national NGOs, is related to ensuring that river connectivity is adequately integrated in the implementation process of the NRR and more in general in river basin planning.
After the end of the project, its outcomes, especially in terms of activated networks and identification of barriers that can potentially be removed, have become part of the ongoing CIRF national and regional activities on NRR implementation.
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