Milan, Mayor Sala:"We will replant the 5 thousand trees felled by the storm."But the money isn't there and experts warn:"It won't be enough"

The teacher Stefano Caserini:«If there are no global actions, the temperature in Milan will increase by at least 10 degrees»

«Let's start from a certainty:climate change exists."Thus began the speech of the mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala to the event How we adapt to climate change which took stock of the consequences of storm which hit Milan between 24 and 25 July.«If we are here talking about it with serenity it is only because it happened at night.At 4pm it would have been a huge tragedy."That night the city lost 5 thousand trees causing widespread damage:"In a month we fixed the bulk of it, let's face it we were good", exulted the green councilor Elena Grandi.Sala echoes her and promises to "replant them all", despite the Municipality still being busy searching for funds.An announcement that does not reassure the professor of Climate Change Mitigation at the Polytechnic of Milan Stefano Caserini, who from the same stage a few hours later says:«They won't be enough.We plant trees to postpone our intervention, but they are only one of the solutions to be applied to mitigate the impacts of climate change and not the most important one."

Trees are a resource, but not the solution

Yet the challenge of the trees seems to be a priority for Milan:the city is committed to the project Forest me which plans to plant 3 million by 2030.For Caserini, who is also the Environment Councilor of the municipality of Lodi, there would actually be a danger behind this solution:«I see a risk of deterrence.It's not true what you read around that it would be enough to plant a forest the size of the USA to solve climate change."According to the professor's thesis, the implementation and improvement of the tree heritage would be exploited to avoid more impactful interventions.The teacher is not the only one to see the limits of this strategy.For Luigi Portoghesi, professor at the University of Tuscia, trees not only bring benefits but also inconveniences in the case of a storm like the one in July which uprooted many of them, making entire roads unusable.The professor suggests a method to overcome crisis situations:«A risk index could be added based on the verifiable event».Each tree would be cataloged based on its characteristics which would indicate which factors would be the most harmful to its survival.If you want to extend greenery across the territory, as the director of the North Park Riccardo Gini asks, "we must also limit land consumption as much as possible".The care of the tree heritage is also fundamental because among the related problems there is the management of the road surface, raised by the roots, and the issue of parking.Standing above the roots of trees for agronomist Alessandro Pestalozza is an incalculable damage:«The plant is suffocated in its development and is unable to absorb rain water».

We must therefore not concentrate our efforts only on increasing urban greenery.Caserini suggests some interventions:«Scrap the fossil production system, use heat pumps, install photovoltaic panels».Ultimately, explains the professor, adopting drastic measures to reduce pollution, the only ones capable of stopping the future of Milan designed by IPCC sixth report.«What we do now matters», declares Caserini, «for the Brera observatory in Milan the temperatures have already increased by three degrees.In the worst case scenario, without any mitigation intervention, temperatures in this city will rise by 10-15 degrees."

(Cover photo by Andrea Fasani for Ansa)