Wednesday 26th of March the MEDSEA Foundation chaired at the Scolopi Palace in Oristano the second annual meeting of the Local Consultative Group, composed by all the subjects involved in the Maristanis project. In addition to the majors and council members of the 11 municipalities affected by wetlands framing the Gulf of Oristano, the meeting was attended by officials of the Sardinia Autonomous Region and representatives from the Protected Marine Area “Sinis Peninsula and Mal di Ventre Island” and the FLAG “Pescando”.
New strategies related to the Maristanis project were presented by the MEDSEA specialists, who interacted with the institutions on the best practices to be adopted for their implementation. The first speech was delivered by Luca Santarossa, one of the most important experts in Italy when it comes to socio-economic aspects of the environmental policies. “If we want the wetlands in the Oristano area to become a touristic destination it is necessary to construct a brand. A successful brand, one capable of winning the competition with the other proposals around the Mediterranean basin, derives from the identity of the territory, from the philosophy we intend to spread” explained Santarossa. For this reason in June MEDSEA will meet the “friends of Maristanis”, all the managers of the 200 and more hospitality structures working in the area and willing to take the path of sustainability. These will receive support from the project’s specialist in in training and planning the process of adaptation to the eco-friendly standards. “Two or three structures per municipality would suffice for the touristic activities surrounding the territory to begin being perceived as “wetlands-friendly”, as parts of a cultural and economic identity”, Santarossa added.
Luca Melis, an environmental engineer, described the fundamental elements of the “Coast Plan”, the participatory process through which Maristanis intends to link in a communicative relation, starting from the privileged position of those living in the areas, all the bodies (at local or international level) in charge for the protection and development of the environmental resources. “Complexity of the environmental issues is an added value of the Maristanis project and the territories it works on. We have to rethink, without forgetting simplicity in the interventions, the necessary tools to make the Plan effective. We have to move in two direction. One trying to unify all the areas, the other, parallel, to give to every spot its own specificity in the integrated context”.
“These are very important moments for the project’s development”, says Massimo Marras, president of the Protected Marine Area. “Thanks to the MEDSEA supervision and the MAVA co-funding for the first time the Oristano wetlands are at the centre of an organic governance that involves all the institutions. It’s a complex system that doesn’t take into account only the environmental aspects, but takes care of the economic and cultural issues as well. The answer to climate change ought to tie in a synergy all the subjects in charge of the protection of the environment”.
“One of our goals is that of allowing the highest number of centres to become Ramsar municipalities”, explained to the Local Consultative Group Alessio Satta, MEDSEA president and director of the Maristanis project. The Ramsar Convention is the intra-government accord that since 1971 directs in 170 countries the conservation and management of the wetlands of international relevance. “It is a long path, ending in 2021”, Satta continued. “But being recognized by the Convention as municipality able to adopt good environmental practices
would be of great importance for the social and economic fabric. As for all the other Maristanis initiatives, our experts are at disposal of the institutions for the strategies’ development, or to facilitate the birth of new ideas emerging from the territories”.