A concrete commitment to promoting virtuous pro-environmental measures, such as the replacement of all municipal diesel boilers, the planting of new trees, the adoption of measures to decongest the city from vehicular traffic, investment in public transport and the incentive to use more sustainable means of travel: is the objective of the Covenant of Mayors, the document promoted by the municipal administrations of Milan, Bologna, Turin, Venice and Treviso which Legnano has joined, together with around eighty municipalities in the
Northern Italy, last week in Milan on the occasion of Earth Day.
The Legnano administration was present to sign the Pact Sustainability Councilor Luca Benetti: «In the second half of February we accepted the invitation of WWF Insubria to take an active part in an initiative against air pollution which, in those weeks, had reached warning levels – recalls Benetti. On that occasion, Mayor Radice was clear: in addition to what we are doing in the City, i.e. reducing heating in public buildings, energy efficiency works, tree planting and initiatives to promote sustainable mobility, something else is needed because alone, on issues as complex and large-scale as environmental ones, we are going nowhere. Our commitment, with environmental associations, was in the direction of involving the higher bodies, a condition for any initiative to have the possibility of being incisive. To the Covenant of Mayors we joined with a systemic vision: we cannot address the issue of air pollution by closing ourselves within the municipal perimeter. We must think about adopting, all together, measures on a significant dimensional scale such as that of the Po Valley.”
The quality of the air in our plain is affected by two aspects that favor the accumulation of pollutants: its morphology, that of a depression where smog and dust tend to accumulate, and the massive presence of anthropic activities, with over 20 million inhabitants , which generate more than 50% of the national GDP. A situation aggravated by the climate crisis, with its increasingly extreme meteorological phenomena, such as more frequent and long-lasting periods of drought alternating with increasingly violent rains, which contribute to the accumulation of pollutants, compromising air quality even further. But if local realities cannot do much individually, even an aggregation such as the Covenant of Mayors is aware of not having sufficient forces and resources and of having to look to the support of Italy and Europe to play a game with adequate means crucial to guaranteeing a future. We ask the Italian Government to urgently make available investments dedicated to reducing the negative impact on the environment of the transport of people and goods and of agricultural and industrial activities. For this reason, the mayors ask the Government for concrete investments in the financing and sustainability of local public transport, especially in the transition to electric vehicles and extraordinary funds for plans to replace obsolete boilers and, more generally, for the energy efficiency of buildings and urban reforestation, quickly and with an agile and efficient delivery system.
Another interlocutor is the European Union, because the Po Valley area represents one of the most critical cases of the Old Continent. The mayors
agree that the only solution is an extraordinary plan at all levels precisely because the issue of air quality cannot be addressed only occasionally and on a local scale: it is, rather, a continuous and constant challenge that involves everyone the actors of a larger territory. Hence the request for strong coordination of actions, also through a special commissioner structure, which, in agreement with the Municipalities and involving the Regions, helps to identify possible actions and objectives, which helps to achieve them also through the provision of funds and resources, to be combined with those of the Government, to deal with the necessary interventions.
At the moment the five promoting mayors are working to spread awareness of the Pact and stimulate membership among municipal administrations to form a consistent critical mass; optimal condition to start with the operational phase.
