Catanzaro – Calabria’s future on the sea is the topic at the center of a speech by Emilio Errigo, contract professor of “international law of the sea” and “management of port activities” University of Tuscia, current Extraordinary Commissioner (SIN Crotone- Cassano and Cerchiara of Calabria). “The alternative energies to hydrocarbons and other environmental resources, called green, white and blue renewable energies, attract an ever-increasing number of researchers and groups of national investors and foreign investment funds, towards the valorisation of energy sources considered inexhaustible, renewable or, for to put it in a more understandable summary, free resources present in the surface of the waters of the Mediterranean Sea and in the spaces still available below “International Continental Shelf”, subjected to Italian national sovereignty”, states Errigo, maintaining that “water, air and sun have been and will always remain the first and most powerful energies that living beings can freely enjoy, without prejudice to the legal obligation of strict observance of the international treaty and conventional law. As long as the good Lord wants it, therefore, we will be able to benefit from the marine water resources and the underlying soil of the national maritime subgrade for purposes of exclusive national economic interest, in a vast maritime area, conventionally called “Exclusive Economic Zone”, already established and awaiting the expected proclamation in Italy, in implementation of law 14 June 2021, n.91, (GU n.148 of 23 June 2021), entitled: “Establishment of an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) beyond the outer limit of the Territorial Sea”. The water, which by its very natural composition could also be called the “white coal”, it constituted and represented for everyone the first energy resource for the production of energy, then came the sun, which, appropriately exploited technologically, gave us solar-thermal energy in large quantities, finally the air, did not remain limited to just the blades windmills, so much so that today it is not uncommon to see millions of so-called wind turbines on every hill or mountainous height, in an ugly environmental display, turning and turning without any peaceful respite in order to produce the much useful, desired, expensive and necessary electric energy. The vast spaces of the sea surface of Calabria, still free (it is not known for how long) from maritime platforms for exploration, research and extraction of hydrocarbons and other huge mineral resources, present in the underlying Calabrian continental shelf, will in the future not be far away affected by the presence of numerous investors and groups of banking origin, both national and foreign”.
“The interest in marine areas – he continues – characterized by shallow waters typical of the numerous submarine banks located in the Italian Continental Shelf, with homogeneous leveled bathymetrics and the sea coasts of our beloved Calabria, finds foundation in the legal institutions of international maritime law , from the “Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Platform”, governed by (UNCLOS). The Montego Bay Convention, signed in Jamaica, by the plenipotentiary representatives of the participating States adhering to the convention, on 10 December 1982, subsequently ratified also by Italy, with law 2 December 1994, n.689, entitled: ‘ratification and execution of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, with annexes and final act, done at Montego Bay on 10 December 1982, as well as of the Agreement implementing Part XI of the same Convention, with annexes, done at New York on 29 July 1994’”.
In the future, Errigo finally reflects “we will see here and there, in scattered order in the middle of the sea, not very far from the maritime coastal strip of Calabria, appearances of Green Artificial Islands, habitable infrastructures equipped with all the energy resources and services necessary to live in total psychophysical well-being, far from the chaos and carbon monoxide pollution of the city. International real estate agencies have already strained their ears before arriving at the appointment with unjustified delays compared to the foreseeable growing interests of national and foreign investment funds. Maritime and coastal Calabria, therefore, increasingly attractive for its indisputable environmental charm unique in the world, with the foreseen possibility offered by conventional international law to authorize the construction of Artificial Islands, positioned in the middle of the sea in the most congenial areas, will become attractive to international markets and foreign merchants. It will be like this?”.
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