Local government initiatives to promote industrial development. The case of Abruzzo Region

The transition to sustainable industrial systems is one of the cornerstones of European Union policy to develop a competitive economy, that are progressively translating into a series of regulatory and other initiatives, both at national and local level. Although these initiatives are now numerous, few have been able to make the most of the advantages of a “bottom-up” collaborative approach, capable of synergistically exploiting the advantages deriving from incentives, financing and tax relief that European policies, at the local level, have promoted in the last few years. In this article, the “Carta di Pescara” initiative will be presented and analyzed. It is a programmatic document of the Abruzzo Region, co-designed together with the business and academic world, which incorporates the guidelines of European policies on environmental sustainability applied to industry. The article describes the inspiring principles of this governance tool, the choice of stakeholders, the structuring process, the selection and definition criteria of the rankings, the rewarding mechanisms. Finally, the first results will be exposed, some statistics on the current members and the potential benefits as well as the criticalities of this initiative.