Vincenzi (Anbi):“It is wrong to pit agriculture against the environment:it is the positive and real response to the ecological transition"

According to the president of Anbi but also current president of the European Union Water Management Associations (Euwma), we need to think about policies related to water, "at a global and European level"

ROME – The Water Resources Observatory has announced that Italy has returned to a normal water regime, but for Francesco Vincenzi, president of Anbi (National Association of Land and Irrigation Water Management and Protection Consortia), the risks are not yet far away.“This does not mean that the country can stay calm, nor that it can quickly forget what happened:from drought to the calamitous events that hit Romagna, Marche and Tuscany - he explained to the Dire news agency - If today we have replenished those aquifers, However, we must be aware that our territory is very fragile due to its geographical conformation and lack of infrastructure.In our country certain works have never been done, and today, faced with the challenge of climate change, we realize that we are not resilient to these calamitous events."

Anbi has been maintaining for years that "it is necessary, faced with the challenge of climate change, mitigate the causes to eliminate or reduce the effect of climate change. Eliminating them would be very virtuous but we know that it is impossible, while what we must do today, and do it very quickly, is adaptation - continued Vincenzi - Which means preventing some events and setting up the country's infrastructure to prevent them.For years Italy has been spending too much money to repair the damage.Our country responds positively to the emergency, but we cannot rely only on emergency management to manage a phenomenon such as climate change.We must invest more in prevention, even if prevention does not pay from an electoral point of view.But we must make an above all cultural effort to make people understand that the money we spend on prevention gives not only an economic but also a social advantage to our territory".

“10 THOUSAND POOLS TO INCREASE WATER RETENTION“

Ten thousand reservoirs to supply all the territories with water, is the proposal put forward by the Anbi.“It would mean no longer seeing municipalities served by tankers in the summer period but also in the winter, in the hinterland.It would mean giving clean water to our citizens, producing electricity, giving water to agriculture to achieve the food sovereignty objectives that this government is implementing - the president of Anbi Francesco Vincenzi explained to the Dire news agency - We understood how important it is from a social point of view to have food available.But to do this we need to have water available.We are a country in the South of the Mediterranean but we are stuck at 11% water retention, we need to reach 35%, which would make our territories and the economies of our territories that supply themselves with water to produce safe".

Vincenzi underlines that “85% of Italian food comes from irrigated agriculture. This is why we must support the infrastructures that guarantee the right amount of water to produce food;invest in innovation and technology and implement all the paths that allow us to recover those waters that we do not have available today, which are wasted.We must try to retain and release them for the production of food, electricity, and to maintain that extraordinary environment that exists because we have irrigation water that circulates within over 20 thousand km of canals".

“BRINGING CULTURE BACK IRRIGATION WATER TO EUROPE“

“At European level we need change those regulations that penalize our agriculture and that very often pit agriculture against the environment. Agriculture is the positive and real response to the ecological transition. We cannot think of managing water policies at an Italian level, we must do it at a global and European level“.Francesco Vincenzi, president of Anbi but also current president of the European Union Water Management Associations (Euwma), told the Dire agency.

“In 2000, when the framework directive on water was written, we were in a European context that was very far from the current one - explains Vincenzi - We had Nordic countries that did not feel the need to need water, while today, after 23 years, countries like Germany, Denmark and Finland have lost over 30% of agricultural production due to lack of water.In this context, we want to bring back to Europe the culture of irrigation water which was missing in the past but which is necessary today to lend a hand to our Europe, so that it is self-sufficient from a food point of view in a geopolitical context that does not provide tranquility".