“The redefinition which will concern some territories and will strengthen the 360 degree action of the Calabria Marine Parks Authority is not a technical act, but a choice of vision and development perspective. It means overcoming fragmentation and connecting natural systems that already dialogue with each other, to build a unitary management of the environmental and identity heritage of our region, promoting its experiential use on a global scale and without seasonal limits. It is within this programmatic framework that President Occhiuto’s strategic project continues to consolidate: a region that reinterprets, organizes and enhances its natural specificities internally and in the world, from attractors to identity markers, as a competitive perimeter to change narrative and establish itself on all markets as a tourist-experiential destination”.
Connected from Cirò Marina where, representing President Occhiuto, together with the Undersecretary of State for the Interior, Wanda Ferro, he presided over the handover ceremony of the new employment center located in a property seized from the ‘ndrangheta, this is what the regional councilor for the Environment, Antonio Montuoro, reiterated, concluding the end-of-year event dedicated to the presentation of the balance sheet of the 2023-2025 activities and the 2026 calendar of the Regional Marine Parks Authority (Epmr) of Calabria.
At the well-attended meeting, hosted in the organisation’s operational headquarters, at the Ex Tonnara di Bivona in Vibo Valentia, responding to the reflections and provocations of the strategic communicator Lenin Montesanto, the General Director Raffaele Greco retraced all the main stages of the EPMR.
“There are years – he said – that pass and years that change the pace of a land. 2025, for the Marine Parks of Calabria, was the year in which protection became a project, enjoyment became a method and governance stopped being a formal exercise to transform itself into shared responsibility. From the sea to the hinterland, Calabria began to describe itself as an experiential, aware and integrated destination, capable of keeping the environment, identity and economy together. It is a new history, made of pride and awareness, entirely Calabrian, written in the pages of the 2026 Calendar of the Marine Parks Authority. Because the sea – he repeated – is not an elsewhere. It is from here that Calabria can recognize itself and start again, bringing together protection, culture, innovation and economies. and to what will also be done with councilor Gianluca Gallo – it will be the year in which this plan will become a concrete reality in the territories”.
The presentation of the cultural and editorial initiative which also includes Rubbettino Print and Diemmecom among the partners, explained by Lenin Montesanto, who is also the creator of the regional MID project and took care of the concept and contents of the Calendar, closed the meeting as a visual and cultural synthesis of this vision. Twelve months to talk about an unprecedented Calabria, through backdrops, landscapes, communities and the Distinctive Identity Markers (Mid) of the Extraordinary Calabria, the one that, as President Occhiuto often reminds – commented Greco – Italy and the world still do not expect.
Beyond its traditional function – said Montesanto – the new EPMR Calendar also aims to be a tool for territorial marketing and different tourist communication. For the first time, in fact, a regional calendar indicates a viable connection in Calabria, for macro destinations and for target travelers with different motivations, based on some of the many MIDs that Calabria is rich in, the one that is often still unexplored. And that this original and prospective initiative, of reunification – he added – in a hypothesis of integrated offer for potential domestic or international tourists, was implemented by the Marine Parks that strategically look to the hinterland, can be considered a turning point and a format that can be successfully replicated.
Present at the event, among the many others, together with the many associations that responded to the invitation of DG Greco, were also the mayor of Praia a Mare Antonino De Lorenzo, the manager of the Secca di Amendolara Marine Park Antonio Ciminelli and the Environment Councilor of the Municipality of Zambrone Vincenzina Rosa Carrozzo.