PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE Recently the Campania Region has approved the Regional Territorial Plan (PTR).
In the coming months, the province of Benevento will make his Provincial Coordination Plan, and many municipalities in the Valle Telesina will have to update their development plans, endorsing the new PUC (municipal development plan).
In its planning process and regulatory, it can not be identified as the main aim is to ensure adequate protection of the environment and landscape of the "aggression" of human intervention, as required by the same PTR, which requires to protect, enhance and redevelop the area with the lowest consumption of soil and without neglecting the defense of agricultural land.
Basic methodology will be applied and the ability to enable effective participation by citizens. The PTR
introduces, in Campania, the concepts of self-recognition of local identities and self-organization in development.
This means, above all, that local communities must be the protagonists from the beginning to the end of the processes of programming and planning.
But how can it be made effective citizen participation, resulting in a technically valid results, and to reconcile the interest in socio-economic development of the area related to that, altrettando legitimate, and not necessarily alternative, landscape conservation, protection dlel'ambiente, and conservation of resources?
E 'need to develop and establish a method of indicators.
I found very interesting in this regard, reading a book written by Joseph Messina, an agronomist and expert in environmental planning, committed to sustaining the land and the agricultural landscape of fields: "
Indicators for sustainable land use planning - Campania the case, "published by the publishing house" The School of Pythagoras. "
According to Messina, sustainable planning can not leave out a participatory process and shared by a choice of "indicators", ie the parameters on which to base measurements, targets, and perform testing and choices.
given below a brief summary of the text.
Messina, starting with an indicator "aggregate" ecological footprint, proposes three indicators: sustainability, desertification and energy.
The ecological footprint is defined as the total area of \u200b\u200bterrestrial and aquatic ecosystems required to produce the resources that a given human population consumes and to assimilate the wastes that the population itself produces.
Well, in Campania, compared to 0.24 hectares per capita available (with a biological capacity equal to 0.82), The ecological footprint is equivalent to 3.56 hectares per capita. Therefore, the natural resources of Campania are unable to regenerate at the same pace with which they are consumed, and to support the rhythms and lifestyles of nearly 6 million inhabitants, it would take more than 20 million hectares, while those actually 1,359,354 available only with a UAA (utilized agricultural area), which is gradually decreasing, mainly because of urbanization that, only in the last 15 years, agriculture has removed more than 7000 hectares of land.
The European Union guidelines for sustainable land use are based on a careful sizing of the plans, strengthening of sustainable transport networks, the control urban sprawl, the use of degraded areas and sottolutilizzate already urbanized.
also requires the use of parameters (indicators), upstream of the choices, policy makers suggest the best way to ensure a sustainable future.
A conservative use of resources can also ensure local competitiveness in terms of goods and services available and enjoy it. Instead, an area devastated in the name of the production itself is not competitiveness, because inadequate for the same population.
Having pursued in many areas of Campania a development model based on the maximum monetary profit, on the pension position and indiscriminate exploitation of resources, have certain low territorial competitiveness.
Creating competitive conditions, it means ensure a "healthy" in its material and immaterial values, the quality of social relations between individuals, the absence of conflict, the ability to be perceived as a community, integrity and quality resources are the factors of a modern territorial competitiveness. According to Messina
must invest in training, to increase and improve the level of skills, to abandon intensive practices by economic need, increase the "multifunctionality" in agriculture, enhancing the secondary functions to intercept the question of rurality that is increasingly spreading Piau, and diversify farm income (hospitality, self-power generation, agriculture, social, educational farms).
The effects of global warming in the coming years, could be devastating.
2% of the Italian territory is threatened by processes of drying soil (desertification). And the situation in Campania, as in most of the south, is really dramatic, mainly because of the continuous neglect of agricultural land and urbanization (the urbanized area has quadrupled from 1960 to 2000, compared to a population increase of 20% only).
To avoid the catastrophe must be introduced changes both internationally and locally.
In Campania, in the last 50 years, the expansion of urban waste management, there has been a real "environmental massacre", due to the systematic lack of adequate planning, and the rejection of dialogue with the people concerned who have lost all faith in the institutions.
Now, the institutions, to recover the trust must adopt a model completely different approach, changing from a mere communication tool of choice and the business of the illustration, a process of exchange and interaction, through which to build the 'identity of the area: the socialization of information, activation of networks and synergies, shared definition of the choices, the mobilization of energies and skills.
Given the traditional methods of defining the choices (bargaining and political exchange, planning, pooling of interests), Messina also proposes the method of dialogue: pay attention to the common good and openness to public participation.
One of the practices at the local level may object to the desertification is a good collection, which recovered completely organic waste for composting and send it completely and use in agriculture and also in the management of urban green spaces, replacing the chemical fertilizers .
The role of organic matter in soil is a factor important strategy in fighting climate change and desertification. Messina offers local governments a MANIFESTO FOR THE RECOVERY of the organic waste and the production of organic manure through composting, with positive effects in terms of cost, waste management, but also with effects on the workability of soils, better water retention , decrease erosion, and, finally, in terms of quality and quantity of agricultural production.
Yet, one should reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, promoting energy saving and use of renewable sources, to be financed by high taxation of "polluting fuel." Messina also highlights
how wrong the decision to carry out other plants that produce energy from conventional sources (eg gas turbine power plant planned in Benevento) and, more importantly, incinerators, emissions that are not tolerable and that destroy valuable recyclable materials, with a budget energy "completely failed.
Furthermore, the organic fraction of municipal waste produced in Campania, even if it were entirely transformed into compost, it would be insufficient to meet the needs of the regional agricultural land, so you must also use all the available biomass. That also excludes the use thereof for the production of energy.
Messina's book is very interesting, and should be be read by all administrators and technicians of local authorities in Campania.
