The Life Tovel Project, promoted by the Municipality of Tuenno, in collaboration with the Adamello – Brenta Natural Park, and the Tridentine Natural Science Museum in Trento, aims at experimenting a territorial planning model which regards the touristic development of the area inside the Municipality of Tuenno, an area of particular landscape beauty and naturalistic interest.

All project activity is backed by the financial aid of the European Commission Life Environment, which has evaluated this experience as a concrete example of territorial promotion, and, for this reason, this model can be adopted in other countries inside the European Union.

The project aims at developing those innovatory techniques and methods regarding the environment and the touristic promotion which can protect and exploit the area natural resources and the historic-cultural heritage. We are thus proposing a non-invading touristic formula, presently concentrated along the lake banks, distributed throughout the year, compatible with a possible environmentally-friendly managing system, which respects and increases the value of the natural resources, and, above all, promotes a local economic, hospitality-addressed development.

The expected course of the project is not imposed by the Public Institution, but it is the result of the choices taken by the resident population and the local business enterprises: the decision-making procedure is thus democratic, transparent and widely shared.

The voluntary participation to all activities is the central factor for the initiative success. The proposed interventions consist mostly in non-material elements regarding management and organization, aimed at raising the resident population’s awareness, but also aimed at promoting the contractors’ and operators’ training, at promoting educational and scientific research, at adopting proper managing practices for agriculture, associations, and at creating touristic, sporting and ecological events.

All this, together with the promotion of new economic initiatives in the touristic and environmental field, will be the promoting machine of the area sustainable development, the means by which all economic, social and environmental benefits are to go on in time, definitely longer than the time required to carry out the project.

Moreover, in the next years, the partners are going to set up, in the area of the Municipality of Tuenno, some infrastructures (new visitors’centre, equipped scientific paths, educational laboratories, sports itineraries, etc.) complementary to the project: these will be the first signal of the area quality development, able to meet with the tourists’ needs, who, now more than ever in the past, require high standard services .