Rural Development Policy for Water Management Sustainability in Italy: Opportunities to Achieve Water Framework Directive Objectives

Reg. (EU) 2021/2115 requires the integration between the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) and the Water Framework Directive (WFD) in the 2021-2027 programming period, therefore the consistency between the National CAP Strategic Plan (CSP) and the River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs). To verify this consistency, a survey of River Basin District Authorities (RBDA) has been conducted in various steps along the CSP and RBMPs' programming process. The main objective of this work is to underline the approach adopted to verify whether and to what extent the macro interventions of CSP can contribute to the Key type of measures (KTM) of RBMP's and then to the priority identified at RBD level to achieve the WFD objectives. The result was that the interventions identified in the Italian CSP are quite appropriate for implementing the PoMs from a qualitative point of view, suggesting that about 70% of the proposed CSP interventions (30/43) are considered a tool for implementing the RBMPs. Furthermore, from a quantitative point of view, even if Rural Development resources provide a significant contribution to RBMPs, they must be considered together with other financing funds to provide an adequate cost recovery of PoMs measure. Weak points of integration may be important to understand which RBMPs needs cannot be met through the identified RD interventions, seeking other points of contact in the CSP, seeking other sources of funding, or rethinking RD regional strategies.