Reviewing the application of SEA to sectoral plans in Italy: the case of the mobility plan of an alpine region

Within the Italian context, the application of SEA is particularly advanced in the Autonomous Province of Trento (APT). The APT recently approved a plan on sustainable development in which the selected sustainability indicators were explicitly considered as the reference for future SEAs. Subsequently, guidelines to carry out the environmental report, i.e. the core document of SEA, were issued and experimentally applied to several sectoral plans. This paper critically reviews the experience of the APT, by focusing on the positive elements and shortcomings that affect the guidelines and their application. The environmental report of the APT’s Mobility Plan was selected as a case study. This plan has a high strategic relevance because it deals with several critical issues, such as transalpine traffic. The paper concludes that the approach was set out in an interesting and innovative way, but its application is affected by some limitations, such as the lack of indicator-based analyses.