The Meloni government has already rendered the newborn Climate Change Adaptation Plan impotent

The news is not on the social networks of the Ministry of the Environment and was not even discussed in the press conference at the end/beginning of the year of the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni.Yet the fact that Italy has finally equipped itself with a National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (PNACC) it should be a source of pride for the government, especially because the previous five executives had failed to do so.The sensation that emerges is that of a commitment completed very late, without great confidence, like an obligation that must be respected and of which we do not share much of the urgency and need.

After almost nine years of waiting and disinterest across the political spectrum (Renzi, Gentiloni, Conte, Conte bis, Draghi), the government has finally published the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change.It's a good start and we celebrate it.But the plan has… pic.twitter.com/RffV5SNOQI

— Ferdinando Cotugno (@FerdinandoC) January 4, 2024

In the short note on the website of the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security, released on January 2, we read that 

“The Minister of the Environment and Energy Security, with decree no.434 of 21 December 2023, approved the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change.An important step for the planning and implementation of climate change adaptation actions in our country."

No comments from Minister Pichetto Fratin, who never fails to make a statement regarding every decision taken by the ministry, no position taken from the deputy minister, Vannia Gava, always careful to position herself autonomously.Yet the mass of attached documents - more than 900 pages of data, analyses, tables, indicators and measurements - would have deserved a political elaboration of an act which, whatever the vision, remains necessary and fundamental.

Because the 2023 that we have just put behind us confirms, if there were still any need, that also in Italy the climate crisis has taken the path of what the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres defines as "climate collapse".As he confirmed Copernicus, the European Union's scientific collaboration program that deals with Earth observation, the average global temperature in 2023 was the highest since 1850, i.e. since science has been able to estimate annual measurements.Adapting to the collapsing climate should be a priority and not a formality.This is why we need to analyze what the state intends to put in place to deal with the next inevitable "extreme weather events".

The possible reasons for the silence on the Plan

Exactly one year ago "the all-Italian odyssey of the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change" had been told on Blue suitcase, in a piece in which the author Marika Moreschi had pointed out that "Fratelli d'Italia had promised its definitive implementation already within its plan electoral, but in rather generic terms and without worrying about giving a real deadline".Just under 365 days later the odyssey has come to completion but no one seems to care about the arrival.

The all-Italian odyssey of the National Climate Change Adaptation Plan

Even less so to the Prime Minister, from whom it was reasonable to expect a mention of the PNACC during the meeting three-hour press conference on the 2023 budget, the first real year of government for Giorgia Meloni.If it seems incredible that none of the 42 questions posed by journalists present at Montecitorio mentioned climate issues (not even environmental issues, while on energy issues we limited ourselves to the Mattei Plan), the question to be addressed is always the same:how come a government is always careful to boast and puff out its chest about the results obtained, even when they are overestimated or simply false, chose silence with respect to the Adaptation Plan, an act that was nevertheless completed?

Immediately reactions of much of environmental journalism the weak points of the Plan, already emerged in the draft proposed by the Meloni government in February 2023 and then also confirmed by the final version, which arrived after the consultation phase envisaged by the SEA (the strategic environmental assessment).Emanuele Bompan, director of Renewable Matter, was among the first to write an analysis of the "new" PNACC, in which observe That:

The document, according to various interviewees from the world of politics, planning, public administration and environmentalism, arrives already old and with numerous gaps, both procedural, content and form.Since it is a ministerial decree and not a legislative decree approved by Parliament, it obviously lacks the regulatory force that it would need to be a central axis of the country's economic and environmental development.

The WWF, on the other hand, even wonders whether we are dealing with the more classic "much ado about nothing" and make a long list of the weaknesses of the plan:

The justification that seems to be given for the delays in the Plan, i.e. an alleged bottom-up approach to its drafting, is not true:in reality, the approach was centralized and the consultations and the SEA do not seem to have had much impact.It would probably have been difficult to start with a mere bottom-up approach because the culture of adaptation must be built.Some entities (Municipalities, Basin Authorities, etc.) are carrying out processes, including participatory ones, of considerable interest, but the method adopted has allowed little for it to be transferred to a national level.We believe it is unacceptable that after 7 years a Plan is proposed with "possible adaptation options" "which will find application in the various planning tools, at a national, regional and local scale".The Plans are called this because they serve to concretely plan by making choices, especially at a national and supra-regional level.

Another serious limitation of the Plan is that it seems to identify actions only at an urban and territorial level:not that it is not important, it is vital and, at the same time, very lacking, but as WWF we believe that mitigation and adaptation to climate change should form the basis for programming in a general sense, starting from the economic and social one.This is an element of backwardness which, after seven-eight years of waiting, appears very little justifiable (...) With regards to actions, the Plan appears to be strongly lacking in that integrated vision which should allow us to think of adaptation not as mere emergency or territorial safety measures.Today, awareness and knowledge of the risks should lead to structural measures that the Plan does not yet foresee.Furthermore, this clashes with the systemic approach that the PNACC affirms.

The costs of failure to adapt

Reading the 106 pages of the actual National Plan is however useful for retracing the legal framework of reference, knowing the national climate framework, reading future projections, studying sectorial impacts and vulnerabilities:from water resources to geological instability, from forests to food production.If only to confirm the need for systemic interventions spread across the country.According to the document from the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security, "since the topic is highly transversal, the planning of adequate actions requires:a knowledge base of the phenomena that is systematized;an optimal organizational context;multi-level and multi-sector governance”.We would also need money, actually.

The he pointed out for example Enrico Giovannini, former minister of Sustainable Mobility in the Draghi government and current scientific director of ASVIS, the Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development:

To immediately and fully implement the Plan, the Government needs to create the governance structure envisaged by the Plan itself in a very short time, so as to transform the objectives established into concrete actions.Furthermore, it should be remembered that the PNACC does not benefit from specific financial resources:for this reason it is urgently necessary to evaluate whether and how the investments envisaged by the PNRR or those financed by other instruments, such as the European and national cohesion funds, can contribute to the implementation of the Plan.These analyzes must be conducted by March, so as to be able to evaluate any corrections to be included in the Budget Law for 2025 during the preparation of the next Economic and Financial Document.Policies to combat and adapt to the climate crisis must be considered priorities by the Government, Regions and Municipalities, to avoid disasters like those of recent years and make our infrastructures resilient.

At the end of 2023, almost simultaneously with the publication of the PNACC, Legambiente had reported that the past year was "a red flag for the climate", with extreme events that "rose to 378, marking +22% compared to 2022, with billions in damage to the territories and the death of 31 people".After the adoption of the Plan, the president of Legambiente Stefano Ciafani he appears satisfied for the adoption of the instrument itself but, on the other hand, underlines that we are only at the beginning of a new phase, which will have to be made of concrete choices:

Now, however, we remind the Minister of the Environment and the Meloni Government that to implement the PNACC it will be essential to allocate the necessary economic resources which are currently still absent, not even foreseen in the latest budget law, otherwise the risk is that the National Adaptation Plan Climate Change remains only on paper.Furthermore, it will be important to approve a PNIEC, National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan, with more ambitious objectives of renewable energy production and reduction of climate-changing gases by 2030;a law on stopping land consumption which is still missing after more than 11 years from the start of the first legislative process, also simplifying the demolition and reconstruction of existing buildings and the decree activating the National Observatory will be issued within three months for adaptation to climate change, with a coordination function between the levels of government of the territory and the various sectors.

National Energy and Climate Plan:the future of energy according to the Meloni government is a return to the past

Not only are there no funds but the plan does not even identify the costs of many actions. He explains it well the environmental journalist, Ferdinando Cotugno, on LinkedIn:

The most important section is that of the 361 actions to be implemented, those that will make the difference between a manageable flood and a catastrophic one, between one without victims and one with victims.To get to that point you need resources, spending capacity, and therefore clarity.The cost column of our Adaptation Plan looks like this, almost entirely empty.For over 270 actions out of 361 the costs are not indicated, they are not available, "there is no information on the matter", they are "to be evaluated", "it depends".For 51 items, please refer to other documents and plans (especially European ones).Only 5 actions out of 361 have costs specifically indicated.

In the meantime, in recent years the Regions and Municipalities have done it themselves.And, without a national framework, each entity moved in no particular order, often confirming the "historic" business management of the territories.In a recent article The Espresso he published a series of aerial photographs used by Ispra researchers to measure the net land consumption in Italy in recent years.

These photos of before and after the overbuilding of our country are truly disturbing:every second we lose two square meters of greenery

Read 👉 https://t.co/hwcgUE6M8I https://t.co/hwcgUE6M8I

— L'Espresso (@espressonline) January 10, 2024

A simple but effective expedient to concretely visualize why adaptation is not a priority of this or previous governments:

Italy is increasingly covered in concrete and for this reason it has increasingly serious problems of floods, landslides, drought, pollution, climate emergencies and environmental disasters.At a national level, on average, more than two square meters per second of green areas disappear:21 hectares per day, 77 square kilometers per year.Nature in Italy is under siege.Every year, for decades, enormous extensions of fertile land disappear, with disastrous effects on the territory.In addition to direct damage to the environment, agriculture, landscape and liveability of inhabited centers, there is the loss of natural defenses against instability:where the soil becomes artificial and impermeable, the risks of flooding, landslides, heat waves and extreme events increase dramatically.

More than updating, we need change

The PNACC recalls that "the first phase was characterized by a complex process started in 2017", a period to which "the framework of knowledge on the impacts of climate change in Italy, produced over the years 2017-2018 by a broad community of experts".In the meantime, however, the climate crisis has accelerated significantly.This is why updating the national platform for adaptation to climate change, promoted at the time of the Draghi government on the initiative of the former General Directorate for Climate and Energy, which in turn was part of the former Ministry of Ecological Transition, and created by the Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research .

The platform, writes ISPRA, "intends to encourage the exchange of information between the central administration, local authorities and all stakeholders, starting from citizens, with respect to the topic of adaptation to climate change, thus representing the main information tool in Italy on this topic".Even with renewed data and documents, on the platform, which betrays a somewhat approximate graphic layout, some fundamental links still do not work, such as the site map:

and the maps of climate indicators:

Faced with a constantly changing cognitive framework, all these delays are unacceptable.Just as during 2023 the will of the Meloni government appeared unacceptable punish those who try to raise awareness of the climate crisis and the importance of broad and concrete interventions.For more than a year the activists of the Last Generation have been pressing precisely on adaptation, asking the establishment of a Reparation Fund:

We ask for a preventive and permanent fund of 20 billion euros always ready to be spent to repay damages from disasters and extreme climatic events.That is, we want all the people who see their streets, their homes, their crops devastated by floods, hailstorms, unseasonal frosts, anomalous droughts to be repaid for what they lost immediately.We want this money to always be present and ready for use.If five billion go out, five come back, within a month.We want participatory processes to be established so communities affected by climate disasters can say how they would like to see financial aid from the state used.We want there to be rapid and rapid processes to repair the territories and not for money to be lost in the infernal machine of Italian bureaucracy.Furthermore, we want these funds to be obtained by leveling social injustices:extra profits from fossil industries, a total cut in public subsidies for fossil fuels, a cut in the salaries of managers of state-owned energy-intensive industries, a cut in the salaries of the political class, a cut in military spending.

Furthermore, there is an aspect that is too often underestimated, namely the lack of specialist figures in the territories.In Annex II, entitled "Methodologies for the definition of local strategies and plans for adaptation to climate change", we propose "a series of concrete indications aimed at local administrators of municipalities, cities and metropolitan areas on how to act and equip themselves to respond to the climate changes in their own context", identifying the "main technical and organizational steps necessary to carry out strategic activities", also suggesting "partnerships and tools that can be activated in the different phases that characterize a correct climate policy of local authorities, thus contributing to overcoming operational uncertainties and lack of knowledge adequate for this scale of intervention".

But, compared to the chronic, and now structural, cuts in public spending, which often they have an impact on local authorities, some resolutions appear lunar.It is no coincidence that the so-called "best practices" cited in the annex refer mainly to medium and large municipalities such as Ancona, Padua, Genoa, Milan and Rome.Under current conditions for centers under 5 thousand inhabitants, which in Italy represent 70% of Italian Municipalities and perennially undersized in public personnel, imagining that specific figures dedicated to the climate, and even more specifically destined for adaptation, could be identified, constitutes a pure utopia.

In addition to the necessary updates, the money to be allocated, the creation of ad hoc professionalism in the Municipalities and Regions, the individual necessary laws - such as the one already mentioned on land consumption, but also the framework law on the climate, currently under discussion in the Senate - we certainly need a change of mentality.Up to this moment the Italian right in government has confirmed the worst hopes from an environmental point of view: use the formula of the “non-ideological ecological transition” to confirm the status quo e follow the strategies of large companies, apply one decision-making logic and turns every issue into terms of “safety”, evaluates every European environmental measure (such as packaging regulation, The ban on the production of internal combustion cars from 2025 or the air quality directive) as an unsustainable expense and not as an opportunity to be seized.

The scam of conservative ecology, the green thinking of the right in power

Faced with the ongoing climate collapse, there may perhaps be a traditional, identity-based, populist, sovereignist adaptation (we were talking about it here) but we can no longer afford the failure to adapt the territories.Adapting is already a question of life and death, it is no longer a political option to choose whether to pursue or not.

Preview image via ecodallecitta.it