Protect the environment to produce wealth and work. This is the aim of the National Biodiversity Future Center. A creature of the Pnrr that links fifty research centers and two thousand scientists
Monitoring of the toad, a small yellow-bellied toad typical of the Apennines, an exclusive Italian fauna at risk of extinction. The study of the “wellbeing molecule”, a sort of traffic light that defends the body from exposure to stress or pollutants. And “Nomadic”, the show by Telmo Pievani which debuts at the Science Festival of the Parco della Musica in Rome, a technical and musical story of migrations as a central event of human and animal life.
They are three disparate events, but linked, in general, by interest in the environment. And more particularly from the direct relationship with the activities of the National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC): the national coordination center for biodiversity research which celebrates its first year at the end of May. «Our role is to connect the many public and private research centers that have been working for some time and are now involved in managing the largest European investment in biodiversity», explains president Luigi Fiorentino. Financed by the Pnrr with 320 million euros, coordinated by the National Research Council, the center involves 49 scientific institutions for a total of two thousand researchers.
The model of coordination between often distant and different entities refers to an object dear to those who care about the environment: the wheel of a bicycle, with a central pin (hub) from which the spokes start. Fiorentino continues: «The hub is made up of a team (scientific director, program manager, general director, legal manager…) and maintains relations between the eight spokes, which report to the Cnr and various universities».
Each ray has its own field of research, from the sea to the Earth (which includes the Universities of Palermo, Naples and Genoa on one side, and Siena, Modena and Sassari on the other), from cities to the impact on human health (and here we meet Pievani, who teaches Philosophy of Science in Padua, Maria Chiara Pastore, scientific director of the famous “Forestami” project of the Polytechnic of Milan, and Hellas Cena, nutritionist and vice-rector at the University of Pavia).
Scientific director Massimo Labra summarizes the aims of this collaboration in four points: monitor, conserve, restore and enhance. «Monitoring is needed to be able to intervene before a problem even occurs», explains Labra, who teaches plant biology in Milan-Bicocca and is one of the founders of the ZooPlantLab. «Conserving biodiversity means taking concrete actions to ensure that the richness of flora and fauna that characterizes Italy today remains in the future. But preserving is not enough, we must also restore ruined environments: it is estimated that in Europe 80 percent of ecosystems are damaged.”
And so far we are on usual topics, already protected by the Constitution – article 9 two years ago was expanded to the protection of “the environment, biodiversity and ecosystems, also in the interest of future generations” – and by the controversial Nature restoration law recently approved from the European Union. The most original point is the fourth: «The last aspect is perhaps the most important», confirms Labra. «We have always been accustomed to considering commitment to the environment as a cost for society. We want to make it clear that this is an investment: we want to give economic value to biodiversity. From this point of view we are the richest in Europe, we have more than 60 thousand species of animals and more than 10 thousand plants. If I lived in a country that had gold mines I would say that the economy must be based on gold: but we are in Italy and our economy must be based on biodiversity.”
Is this a concrete scenario? Labra is convinced of this: «It has been calculated at community level that investing one euro in the protection of biodiversity can bring from 10 to 40 euros of profit. In Lombardy alone, and in the last five years alone, more than 10 thousand companies dealing with the environment have been created. In the next few years there will be one million jobs in the green jobs sector.” After all, there are five hundred new hires from the Nbfc alone… Many discoveries from potential commercial developments are at hand: «In the last year we have studied more than 600 plants, identifying a quantity of molecules that may have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory activity , anti-hypertensive. Precious substances for producing supplements and fortified foods and perhaps, after more in-depth studies, also for creating new drugs.”
The opportunity to take stock of the results obtained so far by the Center will come on 22 May, which is World Biodiversity Day. In those days in Palermo, the registered office of the National Biodiversity Future Center, the National Biodiversity Forum will take place, where the annual report on the state of Italian flora and fauna will be presented. They will all be conversations in the future because, underlines Labra, «biodiversity is not ours but also that of future generations. With the NBFC we work for our children and for our children’s children.”
Meanwhile, at the end of the project – which like all those financed by the Pnrr will last three years – the results will be collected in the Gateway, «a kind of large supermarket where our partners – citizens, protected area management bodies, schools, companies – can find a series of tools developed by our work”, explains Labra. And Fiorentino adds that «the two physical locations will be concentrated on two different specialist areas: in Venice the relationship with companies and startups, in Palermo the “scientific diplomacy”, i.e. the collaboration with all the Mediterranean countries».
The results of three years of work will remain in the Gateway: also the research on the “wellbeing molecule”, led by the Milanese scholar Gloria Bertoli, or the monitoring of the toad, which is among the 60 projects chosen by the call for the protection of biodiversity in protected areas.
