Enhance the great heritage of the Campania villages to counteract their depopulation. Make them (re)live through the creation of territorial networks, including around 300 municipalities spread across all five provinces of Campania. This is the project launched yesterday afternoon during the «Green Med Symposium», the general states on the environment in Campania organized by the regional environmental department led by Fulvio Bonavitacola. «The initiative is an important reflection on environmental challenges and opportunities for sustainable development, which involves institutions, experts and citizens», explains the deputy governor.
The project “Villages Health and Wellbeing» was born on input from Palazzo Santa Lucia and Scabec and is reserved for municipalities with less than 20 thousand inhabitants. There are 335, divided into 48 networks, who have submitted an application to obtain the “BSB (health and wellbeing villages)” brand with which to start territorial promotion activities aimed at giving visitors a healthy and culturally stimulating life experience. The brand will contribute to the creation of a network of Campania villages which will develop, in aggregate form, various project proposals. But we immediately aim to create a card that will network museum, historical and food-related itineraries. And above all, everyone will benefit from targeted communication to propose these places on international markets. The municipalities were identified last October through a public tender which identified the networks and lines of intervention which make up the implementation programme. And to avoid parochialism, the announcement envisaged the participation by aggregation of at least three municipalities, in order to be able to implement an integrated tourist offer. 48 villages were eligible, with 334 participating municipalities. Now each “village network” will be assigned a contribution of 50 thousand euros which must be used to prepare the feasibility project, for a total of resources equal to 2.4 million euros guaranteed by European funds. We are talking about a large portion of territory that crosses the five provinces and which together exceeds one million inhabitants. From the municipalities of Caserta, such as San Gregorio Matese, Conca della Campania and Piedimonte Matese, reaching those of the Salerno province, including Petina, Stio, Olevano sul Tusciano, Alfano and Castel San Lorenzo. And, in the middle, the green Irpinia, represented, among others, by Atripalda, Pietrastornina and Torrioni. The Samnite area, with Morcone, Paupisi, Ponte and others and, finally, the Neapolitan villages, such as Casamicciola and Casamarciano.
The governor
«We talk about internal areas, small municipalities, villages and agriculture for a political choice. The Region is no longer the government concentrated on the metropolitan area: in our program – explained the governor Vincenzo De Luca yesterday – the internal areas are no longer orphans, they are no longer a marginal part extraneous to regional political choices and investments, but they are a part of the territory that has equal dignity to urban areas”. For the former mayor of Salerno one could imagine “a connection between depopulation processes and immigration”. Then he explains: «It would be an extraordinary thing if we managed to direct flows of migrants in an organized way to settle them in many small villages, we would be carrying out an extraordinary operation on a social and economic level. This is why it is a project in which we believe a lot and new technologies help us a lot: with a fiber or a fast connection you can work all over the world even from a home in Cilento or Alta Irpinia”.
The environment
Obviously the three days is also and above all an opportunity to take stock of the environmental issues in Campania. «In terms of protection we want to be the first region in Italy: it seems impossible but it was also impossible to imagine the blue flag on the Domitian coast, one of the most devastated coastal strips in Italy. We are getting rid of the ecoballs – he adds – by completing the reclamation program and I believe that within the year we will be in a position to ask the EU to eliminate the sanction which has lasted for 15 years”.
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