Launching event in Italy
On January 16, 2017 the Municipality of Reggio Emilia has organized at its premises the launching event of the URBANPROOF project.
The works opened by Laura Montanari, the Environmental Service Manager of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, who introduced the speakers and gave the floor to Mirko Tutino, Environment Council Member of the City.
Mirko Tutino thanked the participants (about 75) and pointed out that often the images combined with climate change are far from us (eg. polar bears), whereas there are very important events at the local level: floods, drought, effects on agriculture, ... that need to be addressed with communication and prevention campaigns.
Piero Pelizzaro then introduced the concept of resilience, i.e. the ability to react to a shock; the shock for a city may be constituted by floods or by the absence of rain, which may cause increased pollution despite, for example, of sustainable mobility actions. Another question is linked with increasingly hot summer and then the so-called heat waves that make suffer the most seniors and children. Climate change will also affect nutrition, and thus we need to react by taking advantage of these changes to improve local economies. To do this, we need to inform all sectors (eg. also the industry and the whole community) to arrive at a local and more global collaboration.
Francesco Musco has described an overview on the way which cities can become more resilient with, considering that cities have been designed without the necessary attention to climate changes and that the design and planning were always sectorial. The two areas where cities have to work will be hydraulics and summer heat waves, because not taking actions today will have high costs in the medium term. Then he illustrated what has been done in the city of Padua where IUAV has drawn up guidelines on possible adaptation actions.
Laura Montanari summed up the path that led the Municipality of Reggio Emilia in the project LIFE URBANPROOF, starting from participation in the Covenant of Mayors and Mayors Adapt. She then explained the objectives and timing of the project, focusing on the toolkit that will help municipalities to better plan their adaptation actions. Finally, she focused the role of the Municipality within the LIFE project, emphasizing the aspects to work: soil waterproofing, new flooring, requalification of green areas, construction of urban gardens, ...
Carlo Cacciamani gave a framework of regional changes in temperature (13.3 ° C average) demonstrating that these changes are an important indicator to prove climate changes together with the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. ARPAe Emilia Romagna is able to provide free information on the evolution of temperature and precipitation from 1960 to the present and to prepare future scenarios on climate-changing gases. He then focused on the most significant risks at the regional level, i.e. drought, heavy rain, heat waves, saltwater intrusion and snow.
Susanna Ferrari stressed the importance of the active involvement of stakeholders as part of the URBANPROOF project, through a substantive and not formal approach, in order to allow the collection of information, share the actions and support the communication of the results. For the most relevant stakeholders, the Municipality asks the signing of a commitment letter.