Municipality of Ancona
Coordinating beneficiary

Ancona is a city and a seaport in the Marche, a region of central Italy, with a population of 101,909 (2005). Ancona is situated on the Adriatic Sea, on and between the slopes of the two extremities of the promontory of Monte Conero, and is the capital of the region. The city is located 280 km northeast of Rome.

The Municipality of Ancona in the year 2001 established the Environmental and EU Programs Council Department) as a first step for changing the way of defining sustainable policies, for sharing strategies and programs with other local authorities to be adopted and implemented.

Following a gradual improvement of this sustainable management approach, 2 specifics Council Departments have been established in the year 2006; Council Department of the Sustainable Development, Agenda 21, Governance, European Policies Council Department and Council Department for Environment.

Actually the Municipality of Ancona is leading the Italian Association for Agenda 21 (more than 300 local authorities) and the Forum of Adriatic and Ionian Cities playing an important role in introducing sustainable innovations in the Adriatic region.

The effort of the administration enabled the achievement of the following results/instruments:

• the Agenda 21 process, started up on 2000, with the activities for the research and elaboration of the data concerning the urban system and the setting-up of A21 Agency, started up on 2004, for the monitoring of the 2012 Local Action Plan results;
• the Sustainability Report - to guarantee an effective integration of the sustainability evaluation in the decision making procedures, the physics accounting of the Environmental Report must be completed by a social/economic accounting. The Sustainability Report of the Municipality of Ancona, according to the UNEP/GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) guidelines, has been completed and published in the Autumn 2006.

With the contribution of the LIFE financial instrument of the European Community