TRANSCRIPT (1,209 words, slightly
edited for clarity):
Tell us about Local Agenda 21 activities
in Italy.
Local Agenda 21 is becoming more and more popular among
Italian local administrations, as well as in my town, Ancona, which
is is a central eastern Italian town of about 100,000 people. The
step forward has probably been the National Local Agenda 21 Association
which was founded three years ago. We were about 40 local authorities,
cities, or provinces, and now we are more than 300. They are all
working on Local Agenda 21, they are exchanging experiences, they
are trying to find a common way to address the problems of implementation
of Local Agenda 21 which are I think the main issue: how can we
really have an impact on politics and governance?
And how did this translate locally
in Ancona?
Ancona started with its environmental report, and the
subsequent and final step of the report was the ecological footprint
of the city. And now we have the [stakeholders] forum open. This
is going quite well; we have about 150 stakeholders constantly present
which I think is quite a success. And we have major stakeholders
taking part. The forum is divided in five thematic sessions working
in parallel, and we hope to end this discussion phase by the beginning
of next year, and then having the chance of writing down our action
plan to be adopted by the city council.
How easy was it to get the commitment
of stakeholder groups to really become involved?
Well the stakeholders probably got involved more than
we thought, they had a genuinely enthusiastic approach, probably
because, especially in Southern Europe, governance is still very
far from reality and there is still what we call the DAD syndrome
- which is Decide, Announce and Defend - which is the normal approach
to public administration! So when you give people the chance to
be part of the process and to be involved from the beginning, it's
quite a new thing for us, so we had a very good response!
How many stakeholder groups did you
say you have on board?
About 150, which is good because we invited about 400,
so this was a very good result!
How did you decide which indicators
to measure?
The Agenda 21 process is being led by internal personnel
of the city administration. We worked on them, we wanted people
to be commited and to follow the process from the beginning. So
after completing the initial environmental report, we used the resulting
information to choose the indicators from a number of different
categories, ending up with a set of about 70 - 80 indicators that
we think is a proper amount, not too many, not too little. At the
same time we are also involved in the European Common Indicators
Project led by the European Union DG Environment, which has adopted
a set of 10 basic indicators to be compared among all European cities.
Give me an example of some of the most
interesting indicators, the ones which were most useful - which
gave you the most surprising information.
Well the set of indicators we use in Ancona is quite
different from the norm. We are a medium small town, but we are
also the capital of our region, so we have a role which is probably
higher and bigger than the dimensions of the city would lead one
to expect. Plus we have a very big commerical port, and that led
us to include a set of indicators about water quality, marine water
quality, and all the problems about the freight ships coming and
going from the harbour, so this is quite a peculiar set that we
had to work on. Also, quite a large portion of the city territory
is a National Park - we have a promontory by the sea which is a
National Park - so we are taking care of wildlife and biodiversity
as well. So we have a really wide range of indicators.
Now tell me about the ecological footprint
analysis you did for Ancona.
The footprint study is still quite rarely found in Italy,
very few administrations are working on it. But we felt it was a
natural step for our envronmental report. Through the report and
the results of the report, we deceded to study our ecological footprint
which gives an average European result. Of course, we think we can
improve the the footprint. But as I often say, Agenda 21 and the
ecological footprint are really a self-teaching process: you learn
through your errors, you learn by your approximations, and step
by step, you can only do better!
What are the most important stakeholder
groups you got involved?
Our stakeholders representing many important parts of
society. We have for instance the trade unions who are involved,
we have the industrial unions who are involved, then of course all
the more concerned ecological groups,. and we are tying to push
it very much into the public instruction sector - the schools! So
we have a plan in effect that we will push forward next school year,
trying to get all the levels of public schools more involved. We
already have many teachers and directors and school district people
on it, but we want to have more. Actually our next step will be
a sectorial project devoted to the youth, that we are going to call
Local Agenda Under 21!
What about the business community,
the construction firms, architects, real estate developers and so
on? Was it difficult to get them interested? Did they see this as
a threat?
Professional bodies like architects, engineers, geological
bodies and building entrepreneurs or industry see this as a very
good opportunity, because through our good tradition of urban planning
they have a chance to be a part of the choices of the administration
in this sector, which I think are crucial for sustainable development!
And so, good governance on urban plan and land use are something
new. So these professional bodies and private sector stakeholders
are very glad to be part of the process and to decide with us about
the future choices for the city.
Do you have any comments you want to
share with the world about sustainability, 10 years after Rio?
Yes. We really feel, as we said in our Local Governance
section here in Johannesburg, that we have to move from agenda to
action! This is the mandate of local authorities, this is the priority
for the cities. And we know that the action is important and can
be carried out best if the city, if the local authorities act together,
if they have an alliance, if they have networks, if they work exchanging
their experiences. This has been a major help for us and we really
do believe in this! And being a city facing the Adriatic sea and
having on the other side many countries that just recently got a
democratic approach, we are trying to put up a network of cities
of both sides of the Adriatic, together with the states of the former
Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece, to help them build up an Adriatic
Agenda 21.
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