“Loving Italy” it’s a Legambiente campaign, in favor of small municipalities and Italian villageswhich every year wants celebrate the potential offered by extraordinary territoriesoften isolated, apparently marginal, fragile, but eager to be protagonists of social, economic and environmental improvement.
Legambiente is at the forefront to ask for policies that are more attentive to Small Municipalities on the part of central institutions and, in the 20th edition of “Loving Italy”, he decided to celebrate this event in Piero di Curiglia with Monteviasco, symbolic place of a small village in which the new one was inaugurated Piero della Veddasca Legambiente Club (province of Varese).
On the initiative of a group of inhabitants, the new club, born a few months ago, was presented to citizens and institutional bodies. Clear ideas on the role of stimulus towards local institutions to protect and guarantee that the village offers better living conditions for those who live there and can be enhanced with environmental and social sustainability interventions. Resources for the elderly but also for those young people who have decided, by moving, to realize their life project in Piero; an enchanting and unique place, where sustainable, environmental and social development create better economic conditions and promote, in the protection of the territory, a greater connection with the surrounding communities.
Piero di Curiglia with Monteviasco was inserted, together with the larger territory of Val Veddasca, in Ticino Val Grande Verbano Biosphere Reserve, MAB Unesco, for which the institutions must initiate interventions to protect, conserve and enhance the areas involved. An important challenge for which Legambiente intends to commit itself by bringing proposals and contributions. The event of June 1st was attended by President of Legambiente Lombardia, Barbara Meggettowho, in his speech, focused attention on the central role of small villages in the years to come.
In fact, “Wanting Italy well” brings with it 20 years of victories, including the approval in 2017 of the Save Borghi Law, on a proposal from Legambiente, up to Law 158/2017 against hydrogeological instability, which still awaits the implementing rules. Small municipalities will have to implement climate adaptation policies, introducing innovation in the management of services even before contributing to demographic rebalancing. The value of small villages like Piero, located in the mid-mountains and close to the plains which are now scorching due to the rise in temperatures, will increasingly become sought-after places and refuges for those fleeing from the city to cool off. We must therefore look to the future to conserve such an important asset, preserve it for those who live there, but also promote innovative forms of planning that make it an example of a “sustainable village”. Piero, as a village that can only be reached on foot, certainly constitutes a rare case of a hard-working community that wants to continue to live and promote this area.
“The formation of the Club” explains the President Nicoletta Rusciois part of the desire to improve the living conditions of those who live in the village and consolidate “a generational pact” among its inhabitants of different ages and experiences. Already in past years, the small community of Piero has established excellent relations with the institutions acting as a defense and stimulus for the various needs and has recognized the courage to undertake important works: the works for the new bridge, the path that leads to the village awaited by years. The However, the country suffers from the lack of some essential services, among these public transports that allow a connection with the surrounding areas; it is therefore essential to create synergies with the proactive realities that exist in the area, opening up to good practices implemented elsewhere, enhancing the paths and the hiking network, creating routes that allow the discovery of its beauties.
Ambrogio Casiraghi of the Legambiente Club, then recounted the possible origins of Piero, his name and the first populations who inhabited it. He then showed images that portrayed the early 60s and 70s when the village began to live again, bringing young people who had decided to leave the city of Milan for a new life project in an uncontaminated place.
Precisely with the idea of looking to the future, it was presented by Maurizio Miozzi, of the Committee Scientific of the Ecomuseum, the Ecomuseum project to which the Circolo Legambiente adheres with various proposals, one of these concerns community gardens: owned areas which on the one hand are indispensable for sustenance, but which will create spaces of biodiversity and natural methods of innovative cultivation. The Ecomuseum is in fact a supra-territorial project that brings together projects in line with the objectives of protection, conservation and socio-economic enhancement of the Veddasca territory.
Finally, the theme of energy and resources, which he spoke about, could not be missing Gianfranco Malagola, of the Luino Climate Table presenting the proposed actions to the municipalities: among them the creation of CER – Renewable Energy Communities, with the aim of producing, consuming and exchanging electricity locally from renewable sources, with the aim of generating environmental, economic and social benefits .
The morning then ended with a buffet created by the members of the Club: biscuits with five varieties of mint, barley with Piero’s nettles, cheeses produced on site, cakes, focaccias, and herbal teas harvested from the surrounding meadows and woods. Products that delighted the participants while, Maurice Miozzia local history researcher, accompanied those present on a story, a narrated journey of stories, places and characteristics of Val Veddasca.
The Circolo Legambiente Piero della Veddasca then made an appointment for the participants in the next initiatives planned for the summer.
