Events and News

Many relevant experiences have gathered to respond to climate change in Sardinia. On Friday 6 December, Solarussa, a town in the Oristano region violently hit by a flood in 2013, hosted the "Dissemination Workshop" which put together representatives of four “Interreg projects”, the plan funded by the European Cross-border Regional Development Fund. A day of speeches, debates and new synergies dedicated to the creation of practices capable of securing territories increasingly exposed to the violent impact of atmospheric phenomena.

Climate change is a "hyper-object" explains Andrea Motroni of the Meteoclimatic Department of ARPAS, quoting the American philosopher Timothy Morton:"An entity of such a spatial and temporal dimension as to break our own idea of what an object is". But even in an ever-changing and elusive analytic context, something certainly remains. The average temperature has increased by at least 1 ° C, even in Sardinia, and this has exacerbated phenomena such as drought and storms, their intensity and their frequency.

"Since 2016 we have decided to assimilate the issue of climate change into our programs" says Giovanni Satta, engineer of the Environmental Sustainability Service of the Sardinia Region. In other words, the indication of the Marrakech Coop22 was received, with all its focus on the decisive role that the regions must play in the implementation of the Paris Agreement. To this goal, awareness-raising policies, access to finance and advanced forms of cooperation are essential. Guidelines, these, that pursued with decision have made the Sardinia a vanguard in Italy and in the Mediterranean.

The “ADAPT” Plan of Oristano, part of an Interreg involving eleven centers in Liguria, Tuscany, Corsica and southern France, has led to the birth of an Urban Adaptation Plan (PUA) which will soon provide draining infrastructures, green infrastructure management models and water levels monitoring systems. To explain the ADAPT specific articulation at the Solurussa workshop was attended by the Oristano’s councilor for the environment, Gianfranco Licheri, the technician Gianluigi Matta and Andrea Vallebona of “Rete Gais Srl”, responsible for the project’s redaction. Vallebona states: "Water is not our enemy, water is the source of life. But urban realities have progressively moved away from their ability to relate to the environment. First of all we must recover an awareness of the relationship between man and water in a built context, and increase the resilience of the territory. The other fundamental aspect, which emerged during today's speeches, concerns cooperation. Solutions to ecological problems can never be sectorial and isolated".

For this reason the workshop hosted the Interreg experiences of Alghero (ADAPT), Solarussa (Trig eau) and of the Sardinia Region (PROTERINA), as well as that of the MEDSEA Foundation, which is committed to build, within the Maristanis project, a coastal contract necessary to guarantee an integrated management of the wetlands of the Gulf of Oristano. A participatory, voluntary and collective process, signed in the declaration of intent by the municipalities of Terralba, Guspini, Arbus, Santa Giusta, Oristano, Arborea, Palmas Arborea, Cabras, Riola Sardo and San Vero Milis. Governance starts from the privileged view of those who live in the territories and all the subjects, public and private, are involved in the interaction with the complexity and in the elaboration of common strategies. "The municipalities that have decided to take part in the coastal contract are setting up a pioneer community that deals with the problems of a shared territory, organizes itself and finds an ambitious solution", says Gianluca Melis, environmental engineer of the MEDSEA Foundation. "Because of its integrated vision - adds Melis - the contract is an efficient method capable of responding to climate change. There is no other practice for a phenomenon that is so important and stretched out in time and space, if not that of constant listening to the communities, and their cooperation".