Defining a social-ecological performance to prioritize compensatory actions for environmental regeneration. The experimentation of the environmental compensation plan

Performance-based planning (PBP) is an approach to define a flexible, strategic and site-based scenario for the improvement of the social-ecological quality of the territory. The paper provides an experimentation of environmental compensation within the Italian context that can be traced back to the performance-based planning approach. The experimentation proposed is the Environmental Compensation Plan (ECP) of the Stura di Lanzo River, where the involvement of local stakeholders, environmental evaluation, environmental planning and design have been linked together for the definition of specific renaturalisation and environmental regeneration actions within the context of the River Agreement (RA). The ECP and relative methodological framework are then proposed to select and design priority actions of environmental compensation in different territorial contexts. Finally, some indications to further enhancing ECP effectiveness following PBP approach have been reported.