Casini (Basin Authority):“The climate has changed, Italy must catch up on adaptation”

"There is still a lot to do" to enable Italy to face the harsh consequences of climate change

ROME - In responding to the ongoing climate emergency, "Italy is suffering from the enormous delay in addressing the issue of adaptation".The National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change o PNACC, released by the Minister of the Environment and Energy Security Gilberto Pichetto and recently approved "certainly represents an important step forward, but the over 300 interventions identified must now be integrated with the other protection and mitigation plans and, above all, they must be the times and resources for their implementation have been defined".In short, "there is still a lot to do" to enable Italy to face the harsh consequences of climate change.A living need starting from a key element for life itself, but also for the food security of Italians and the prosperity of the Made in Italy agri-food sector, the water.“Over the last 30 years we have neglected it by not investing enough in maintenance, new infrastructure and new technologies such as, for example, those for wastewater recovery and desalination”.These are just some passages of a conversation with Marco Casini, general secretary of the Central Apennines District Basin Authority, a non-economic public body responsible for programming and territorial planning for the management of hydrogeological risk, the protection and management of water resources, the defense of the coasts and the sustainable use of land in central Italy.

After several years, the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change, the PNACC, has been approved. Is it an adequate response to the ongoing climate emergency?

The need to increase the capacity to adapt to the negative effects of climate change and promote climate resilience was established already in 2015 with the Paris Agreement together with the commitment to keep the temperature below the limit of +1.5 °C compared to the pre-industrial period (1851-1900).Italy is suffering from the enormous delay with which the issue of adaptation was addressed.The Plan certainly represents an important step forward, but the over 300 interventions identified must now be integrated with the other protection and mitigation plans and, above all, the times and resources for their implementation must be defined.There is still much to do.

It is essential to invest in projects that push energy efficiency and renewable sources, are we doing enough?

The answer is no, we are not doing enough and it is essential to increase energy efficiency, both in industry and in the civil sector and at least quintuple the current renewable energy capacity installed globally between now and 2030 (the request of COP28 of Dubai is to triple it).To date, in fact, the benefits in terms of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions due to the improvement of efficiency and the new installations of plants from renewable sources are unable to compensate for the constant increase in energy demand due to the increase in population, which in 2022 it reached 8 billion people, and to the increase in demand for cooling and heating due to climate change.Added to this are the emissions resulting from the greater use of coal to the detriment of gas within the energy mix.The result is a continuous increase in energy-related greenhouse gas emissions which in 2022 reached a new all-time record of 36.8 Gt, with a growth of 0.9% (321 Mt) compared to 2021.In essence, despite our efforts, instead of reducing emissions, we are continuing to increase them.Humanity has released more CO2 into the environment from 1990 to today than it emitted from the beginning of the industrial revolution until 1990.

Even the IPCC, while maintaining attention on mitigation and reduction of emissions, underlines the emergency of adaptation plans drawn up on a case-by-case basis, country by country, in a tailor-made manner according to specific needs and risks.Is this the way?Have we lost the emissions battle?

The battle against emissions has made it possible to delay some phenomena, without however preventing them.The climate has changed, that's a fact.However, this battle should not be interrupted, but absolutely strengthened for two reasons.The first is to save us time, the second is that, regardless of the fight against climate change, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, essentially deriving from combustion, allows us to reduce air pollution which, today, constitutes one of the main causes of death worldwide.

The climate has certainly changed much more rapidly than expected, with a very strong acceleration in the last 10 years which have been the warmest on record from 1880 to today.The global warming underway in the last century, which affects air temperature, ocean temperature, melting ice, acidification and rising sea levels, has triggered a series of chain variations in the Earth's climate, from atmospheric circulation to the precipitation regime (frequency, intensity, type), with a consequent increase in extreme events.These lead to droughts, heat waves, flash flooding, storms and floods with increasingly serious damage to people and the environment and consequent greater risks to health, food security and access to water.The phenomenon of ever-increasing migratory flows is also partly a consequence of these climate-related problems.

Hence the absolute necessity, starting from the Paris Agreement of 2015, to combine mitigation measures with adaptation measures to increase climate resilience as soon as possible, up to the introduction of early warning systems for populations.The challenge today has become that of adapting to a climate that has changed and is changing very rapidly.

With the drought we experienced in 2022 there was a rise in the salt wedge by 30 meters at the Po delta, are we not worrying enough?And how is that land recovered?

The phenomenon of the rise of the salt wedge has been affecting more and more waterways since the Second World War, with increasingly important rises towards the hinterland.In addition to the Po, the phenomenon affects other Adriatic rivers such as the Adige, the Piave and the Tagliamento with evident damage to agricultural land and ecosystems.To counteract the rising salt water from the sea and the consequent contamination of land and groundwater, a set of remedies must be implemented which include both the implementation of dedicated interventions (anti-intrusion barriers, rainwater collection basins, desalination), and management measures avoiding excessive withdrawals.The phenomenon is not irreversible, but keeping it under control is not easy.

The water:we experience drought in January in Piedmont or Sicily, when the water arrives it either overwhelms everything or gets lost, we don't use waste water and we are late with the works for hydraulic safety.What do we have against water?

We have nothing against water, but certainly over the last 30 years we have neglected it by not investing enough in maintenance, new infrastructure and new technologies such as those for wastewater recovery and desalination.In the meantime, land consumption in our territory has continued and the climate has changed.The greater climatic pressure, the greater artificial cover of the soil and the growing inadequacy of the infrastructures have led to an imbalance in the relationship between the demand and the supply of water, exposing all sectors, civil, agricultural and industrial, to situations of water severity and of conflict in the use of the resource.

The effects of climate change are today amplified, to the point of truly emergency situations, such as the conditions in which water infrastructures and services find themselves, the lack of effective local planning of demand versus supply, management methods and water use, individual behaviors.To address the security problems of water supply it is necessary to move to a water management model that is as circular as possible, focused on the activities of Collection, Restoration, Reuse, Recovery and Reduction (the so-called 5-Rs of the Circular water model ).

The Observatory believes that an operational strategy should be adopted that involves the integration of short-term measures, mainly aimed at minimizing impacts, and medium-long term interventions, aimed at increasing the efficiency of networks and recovering dispersed water resources. or unused, to greater water accumulation and, more generally, to the improvement of the resilience of water supply systems.Equally important is the need to increase the degree of interconnection between the different water systems and, where technically possible, the connection to multi-resource water supply systems.

Some politicians say it's all the fault of the unmaintained river, the nutria, the armchair environmentalists – a species of nutria evidently – but it's not just about that, right?

The causes of hydrogeological risk are numerous and linked to both natural and anthropic aspects.Our country is certainly a fragile country from a geological and seismic point of view compared to the rest of Europe.Added to this are very high land consumption (2.4 m2 per second) and an ancient delay in the maintenance and modernization of infrastructure for the defense of the territory.Climate change has forcefully entered into this framework and, over the last 20 years, has transformed existing problems into increasingly serious and evident situations, making the commitment to adaptation an emergency.