More trust between politics and science to fight the crisis

To tackle the climate crisis, constant dialogue between science and politics is needed and the Italian scientific community reiterates that it wants to do its part. In an article published in Nature Italy, Antonello Pasinifrom the Cnr’s Institute on Atmospheric Pollution, reaffirms the need to improve trust between climate science and politics and reports on how efforts are being made to achieve this goal in Italy and abroad.

Pasini, is there also a sort of self-criticism in your text?
“Yes, we scientists are not born as communicators, we often do not have the skills to adapt our message to the public with which we now, more and more often, have to interface. Over the years things have changed and improved a lot, we have also seen how the texts of IPCC reports have been refined to achieve greater disclosure, but we realize that we cannot only blame those who do not listen to us and we want to do everything to be heard”.

One of the problems of this lack of mutual trust derives from the timing of politics: do climate sciences develop projects that need too long a time frame for political mandates?
“A constructive relationship does not mean having to tell those who govern at that moment what to do, but providing scientific instruments. In other words, we do not tell politicians that we want to do their job, nor question their vision, but we would like them to counted on us to develop projects, without running after emergencies. We are a country which, thanks also to excellent civil protection, knows how to react to emergencies, but prevention is needed, because the climate crisis is affecting our resources”.

In other words, are you saying to politicians: “use us more”?
“We also forcefully declared our willingness last August, when we drafted the open letter to politics (from which a petition supported by Green&Blue was born ed). We are now working to establish a continuous and institutionalized collaboration, which goes beyond the widely used model of appointing individual consultants for governments and ministries”.

Why is this model outdated?
“The risk is that the consultants chosen do not always represent the best science in the country. Also, as already mentioned, there is a risk that consultants will be replaced when a government changes, while issues such as climate change require policy objectives planned for years or decades”.

What is your proposal?
“On the eve of the 2018 general elections, 18 of the leading Italian scientists of climate change and the environment had set up the Scientific Committee La Scienza al voto. Now the same Committee has launched the project ‘Let’s choose the future’, proposing a new institutional framework for collaboration between science and politics on the climate and environmental crisis.On 22 September, almost all the political forces signed a transversal agreement to establish, at the beginning of the legislature, a scientific consultancy body for the Government and Parliament, with preparatory functions, in the definition of the measures that will impact the climate and the environment, and evaluation of the measures taken – with therefore also a function of possible stimulus for their improvement.TheThe idea is that any vision of the future, of any political orientation, must come to terms with solving the climate crisis, because otherwise we simply lack the resources to implement that vision. We want to make it clear that we must all come together to have policies that go in this direction whatever the government. As scientists we give a range of options, tools and politics must choose how to act. Everyone does their job.”

How is politics responding after signing the agreement?
“Right now we have the collaboration of many of the political representatives, who are beginning to discuss a bill among themselves. Precisely because we want to be practical and proactive, the signatories of the article in Nature include Fulco Lanchester, for the legal committee, and Pietro Reggiani, science communication expert, so that our message has a concrete basis, a bill on which politics is compared. I am optimistic, I hope that politics, beyond color, wants to accept our Invitation”.