The general objective of APICE is to establish long-lasting measures and shared strategies to reduce air pollution in ports-city sites and select the most effective policies in terms of cost/benefit balance, anticipating and favouring the implementation of EU Directives/international laws. The specific objectives are:
- pinpointing, through monitoring campaigns and models, the relative contribution of several pollution sources to the air quality in the project harbour areas, understanding the differences and similarities among the selected areas, and designing future environmental, economic and urbanization policy-scenarios
- strengthen, through the use of spatial planning tools, the governance capacity across coastal areas to arbitrate between conflicting socio-economic and environmental interests by including the air-pollution analysis and the scenarios within the already existing Sectorial Plans (like the Territorial Regional Coordination Plans, Plans for Environmental Recovery, Strategic Development Plans of Ports, Regional Transports Plan and so on), with the final aim of supporting the strategic choices of Regions, provinces and ports in terms of sustainable and integrated coast management
- facilitate and promote voluntary agreements between local administration, port authorities, ship owners & cargos’ handlers (like differentiated dues, kilometres charge, blue flag & tradable emission permits) that can concretely contribute – in the medium term - at curbing emissions and improve the environmental balance of the coastal communities without affecting the economic growth potential of harbours districts.