Green&Blue Festival 2023. Rome: mayors and activists between the Campidoglio and the Colosseum

“An Earth for All” means avoiding what seems inevitable. Therefore, changing direction, ways of life, of governing and of producing, to curb the increase in temperatures and ensure that the face of the planet is not distorted. In Rome and Milan, starting from 5 June, the world that is trying to stop the climate catastrophe to which we are condemned if we continue to pollute will be staged. Days live on SkyTg24, which will begin in the capital between the Campidoglio and the Colosseum in the company of activists, experts, internationally renowned academics, mayors and ministers.

“The latest satellite data from the Copernicus programme, the European Space Agency and the European Commission speak for themselves: record concentrations of greenhouse gases were recorded in 2022”, he explains Paola Mercogliano, of the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC). “Despite the attention on this issue, things are not improving. For example, temperatures in the Mediterranean are increasing by double the average. And with them fires, droughts and heat waves”.

This too will be discussed during the days of A land for all. It begins on the morning of 5 at 10 and 30 at the Campidoglio with the Green City Network of the Foundation for Sustainable Development. The meeting was opened by the Minister of the Environment and Energy Security, Piquet Fratinfollowed by the intervention of the president of the Foundation Edo Ronchi. And then the mayors. We will listen to the plans of Matthew Leporemayor of Bologna, George Gori of Bergamo, Michael War of Parma, Matthew Biffoni from Prato, Stephen Lorusso of Turin and Marco Bucci of Genoa, in addition to Andrew Ragona councilor with responsibility for urban planning, mobility and the environment, of Padua. After all, cities occupy just two percent of the territory, yet they are responsible for 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. We need new models of mobility, services, organization of neighbourhoods.

After lunch, still at the Campidoglio, the mayor of Rome Robert Gualtieriwill dialogue with colleagues Elizabeth KT Sackey of Accra, the capital of Ghana, e Bernadine Rose Senanayake, first town of Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. With them the scientific director of the Alliance for sustainable development Enrico Giovannini And Julia Lopez Venturadirector for Europe of the C40 alliance, or the Cities Climate Leadership Group, a network of over one hundred large cities including the Italian cities of Rome and Milan, which have decided to fight climate change by sharing objectives, solutions and technologies.

During the last C40 conference, held in Buenos Aires in November, one of the protagonists was Carlos Moreno, scientific director of the Pantheon Sorbonne University-IAE Paris, creator of the urban theory of the “15-minute city”. A different vision of the metropolis and, implicitly, of people’s lives, in contrast with the phenomena that have shaped our cities. Adopted by Paris and Barcelona among others, it intends to “give time back to the inhabitants and in doing so lower emissions and heal imbalances starting with the endemic ones between the center and the suburbs”, as he himself says. He proposes to offer services in every neighbourhood: schools, offices, shops, restaurants, hospitals. Everything should be close at hand, within a quarter of an hour on foot or by bicycle. A way to dismantle the ghettos of dormitory areas, avoid hours lost in traffic a year, reduce gas emissions.

He will also be in Rome on the evening of 5 June at the Colosseum. Or rather the Temple of Venus overlooking the Flavian Amphitheater. On stage, in addition to Moreno, prominent voices of the generations who have most risen up against the causes of the environmental crisis: Vanessa Nakate, born in 1996, Ugandan activist linked to Greta Thunberg and author of the essay My struggle to give voice to the climate crisis; the very young Licypriya Kangujamborn in India in 2011, who at the age of just eight took the floor at the 2019 Cop 15; Sophia Kianni, Iranian-American born in Washington in 2001, representative of the Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change of the United Nations. “There is not a single country that has made commitments compatible with the achievement of the goal of limiting the increase in temperatures to one and a half degrees”, Kianni said at the last COP, the one in Egypt. “Meanwhile, more than seven million people die prematurely every year from the toxic air they breathe from the burning of fossil fuels.” The Brazilian surfer will then take the floor Maya Gabeiraentered the Guinness Guinness Book of Records in 2018 for having faced a wave of over twenty meters, the president of the Club of Rome Sandrine Dixson-Declevethe architect Charles Ratti and the founder of Slow Food Charles Petrini. Not forgetting two talented young pianists such as Beatrice Rana And Frida Bollani.

“This is not an epidemic that can be resolved with a vaccine,” Mercogliano concludes. To avoid what seems inevitable, everyone’s collaboration is needed, without exception, starting with governments, administrations and industry.