Best practices, good practices and guidelines: a critical review based on different management options in protected areas of cross-boundary Adriatic-Ionian region

Best practices are, by definition, the best ways to reach a specific goal. In the environmental field, best practices are experiences and quality projects carried out in the territory, by institutions, companies or citizens, that produce benefits in different environmental sectors applied to solve a concrete problem. Relevant features of best practices are their validation and replicability in time and space. In the context of the EU Co-funded BIG (Improve governance, management and sustainable valorization of coastal and rural protected areas and contributing to the implementation of the Natura 2000 provisions in Greece and Italy) best practices have been collected through a web search and questionnaires submitted to the managers of the protected areas to build a reference database/atlas. The database critical analysis has highlighted some gaps about the effective presence and applicability of these best practices. Moreover, their effectiveness has been analyzed on the base of the specific characteristics of the Italian and Greek areas involved in the BIG project. Some contrasting problems to the best practice definition have been highlighted.