Opening Plenaries - Min of Environment

Another of the more engaging plenary speeches yesterday was made by 'His Excellency' Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, Minister of the Environment of Italy. His passion and worry for the global state of the environment and its impact on sustainable development brought a refreshing focus to the more general references to sustainable development overall. He pointed out the alarm that the WWF sounded 1 day before the conference, and thought the timing was significant since the general public's perception of the gravity of the situation is unfortunately very low - we risk the
depletion of resources of the planet by 2050..

Awareness communication is often done in the form of adverts on TV, which is not always the most effective means to changing the approaches of economic decision makers and involving populations and communities in choices that are made.

International organisartions play a key role in his opinion, to assist to integrate policies and to move away from the technical analysis that dominates this field. He also noted that although UNEP exists, it is recognised that a wider committment is required. Effective communication is essential to realise this.
An example given is that of the Himalayas – together with the Amazone, one of most delicate areas in the planet - where climate change is clearly visible. The visible threat that environmental experts recognise is not then related to awareness of citizens, MPs, governments and decision makers. Communication, supported by ICTs can then greatly assist to extend awareness, improve available resources, use resources in a more useful way, as in many occasions, the use of resources are not always monitored and assessed in terms of results.

He challenged us all to move away from investing resources to fight immigration, from Africa for example, but rather to use the resources to fight some of the causes of immigration like desertification etc. There again Communication is required to let explain the interrelationships betweeb environmental factors taht controbute to societal issues that affect us. If we cant explain what is happening and why, if we dont use the technologies that exist, and assist emerging countries to know and address the challenges, we wont reach 'the balance of the planet'..

A passsionate call for international organisations to rise to the occasion and do what we can?