Il convegno è organizzato da APRE, per conto del Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca, in collaborazione con l’Università di Padova.

Sul sito dell’ Apre si può consultare il programma e iscriversi on line

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Our approach is to develop a new class of web-mediated discussion and decision making forum which we call the “Collaboratorium”. This system will use an innovative combination of  internet-mediated interaction, collectively generated idea repositories, computer simulation, and explicit representation of argumentation to help large, diverse, and geographically-dispersed groups systematically explore, evaluate, and come to decisions concerning systemic challenges.
Users will be able to share ideas, raise issues, specify options for these issues, analyze these options using simulation tools, discuss the relative merits of different options, and converge on collective decisions concerning which options to adopt. Tools for registering endorsements,
maintaining reputation information, and identifying well-reasoned lines of argument will help users separate the wheat from the chaff.

[…]

The system will also enable access to analytic tools, including computer simulations, that embody the relationships among factors like demographics, economic activity, government policies, greenhouse gas emissions, and climate changes. Users will be able to posit and argue about possible values for the simulation parameters e.g. they will be able to posit that the birth rate by 2015 will fall to 10 per 1000 persons, or that a global carbon tax of $60 per ton of CO2 will be implemented in 2010. The parameter values that the users converge on can then be analyzed, using the appropriate simulations, to infer the outcomes - good or bad - that they lead to. This direct linkage between argumentation and analysis will enable groups to reach better- grounded collective decisions than either argumentation or simulation alone.

What if you can mix this Collective Intelligence strategy with a public access to a distributed computing power (grid) avalilable to all members of community? The results may be very important.

That’s because T6 addresses apparently different research areas and project. So you can find Environmental project as ARMONIA and an advanced technology oriented projects as XtreemOs that “aims at investigating and proposing new services that should be added to current operating systems to build Grid infrastructure in a simple way”

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Even if his impact on the general public is slim, Gore is having an impact where it counts much more - in the media and among politicians, many of whom have been well behind the public on global warming.

He has helped put the issue on the front pages of America’s newspapers once again.

Equally important, he has made global warming an inescapable part of the political debate as America prepares to choose new leadership and a new agenda for the post-Bush era.

[…]

Equally important, looking forward to the race to succeed Bush in 2008, every serious potential Republican nominee has already abandoned the president’s intransigent position.

The most prominent of them, Senator John McCain from Arizona, is actually the Senate’s leading crusader on the need for the US to adopt a domestic emissions reduction system. McCain introduced the first such bill several years ago, and has forced Senate votes on it repeatedly, achieving near-majorities.

Al Gore’s biggest contribution may be that his movie forces key parts of his own Democratic Party, including some reluctant potential presidential candidates, finally to give more than lip service to the issue.

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Una televisione personalizzata sull’ambiente. Un esperimento per utilizzare i nuovi canali di comunicazione messi a disposizione dal Web 2.0

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 Anthology “Natural Hazards and Spatial Planning in Europe”

Mark Fleischauer, Stefan Greiving, Sylvia Wanczura, Editors (2006):

This book focuses on spatial planning approaches to natural hazards in selected European Union Member States. It presents country studies from Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom and identifies common strengths and weaknesses in the ways in which European planning practices deal with natural hazards like river floods and earthquakes. The book analyses planning approaches and identifies the role spatial planners and spatial planning can play in natural risk assessment and management in order to reduce the vulnerability of communities to natural hazards. Finally, recommendations are made with regard to methods and procedures for spatial planning purposes.

The following authors contributed to this book: Silvia Cozzi, Miranda Dandoulaki, Helen Fay, Mark Fleischauer, Adriana Galderisi, Stefan Greiving, Jaana Jarva, Scira Menoni, Jorge Olcina Cantos, Kalliopi Sapountzaki, Heidi Virkki, Sylvia Wanszura.
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The publication of this book was partly financed by the European Commission as a part of the 6th Framework Research Programme’s project “Applied Multi-Risk Assessment of Natural Hazards for Impact Assessment” (ARMONIA). The overall aim of the ARMONIA project is to provide the European Commission with a set of harmonised methodologies for producing integrated risk maps that can be used to achieve more informed and effective spatial planning procedures in areas prone to natural disasters in Europe.

ARMONIA involves 13 partners from Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Finland, Italy, United Kingdom and Canada (in project order):
T6 s.c.
Staffordshire University, Institute for Environment and Sustainability Research, Faculty of Health and Sciences
Geological Survey of Canada, Natural Resources, Terrain Sciences Division, Canada Landslide Project
Ceske Centrum pro Strategicka Studia, Water Management Department
Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Dipartimento di Pianificazione e Scienza del Territorio
Geologian tutkimuskeskus, Geological Survey of Finland, Southern Finland Office, Land Use and Environment
HR Wallingford Ltd, Dept. Water
Universität Dortmund, Institute of Spatial Planning, Faculty of Spatial Planning
European Commission - DG Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment and Sustainability - Land Management Unit
Potsdam Institut fuer Klimafolgenforschung, Departement Integrated Systems Analysis
Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Architettura e Pianificazione
Algosystems SA, Research & Development Department
Lancaster University, Department of Geography

For further information, please look at the projects’ website: www.armoniaproject.net, or contact the co-ordinator at: info@armoniaproject.net

Distributor:
Versandbuchhandlung & Verlag Dorothea Rohn
Hamburger Str. 65, D-44135 Dortmund, Germany
Phone: ++49 (231) 551338, Fax: ++49 (231) 551337
Email: bestellung@rohn-verlag.de, Internet: http://www.rohn-verlag.de

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John Ashton is the UK foreign secretary’s special representative for climate change and a visiting professor at Imperial College London. This article reflects his personal views (…but we strongly agree).

The Climate Change is an economic but also a geopolitic threat says Ashton  and:

We need to see a stable climate as a public good without which it will become increasingly difficult to deliver the other public goods that citizens rightly expect from those who govern them.

We need to see the pursuit of a stable climate as an imperative to be secured whatever it costs through the urgent construction of a low carbon global economy, because the cost of not securing it will be far greater.

Professor John Holdren, the newly elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a distinguished scientist not noted for sensational pronouncements, told the BBC: “We are not talking any more about what climate models say might happen in the future. We are experiencing dangerous human disruption of the global climate and we are going to experience more.”

This poses a challenge. Governments have traditionally invested in instruments of hard power as a backstop against the consequences of political and diplomatic failure.

But there is no hard power option either for mitigating climate change or for dealing with its direct impacts. You cannot use military force to make everyone else on the planet reduce their carbon emissions. No weapon system can halt the advance of a hurricane bearing down on a city, or stem the rising sea, or stop the glaciers melting.

If we want to achieve climate security, governments will need to invest more resources in the emerging techniques of soft power. There is no backstop: the politics and diplomacy have to work.

Governments will need, as a matter of security, to build the avenues of trust and opportunity that will divert investment from high carbon to low carbon infrastructure.

They will need to negotiate the agreements that will enable us to do that cost-effectively and without divisive market distortions. They will need to design and mobilise coalitions of mutual interest across sectoral and cultural boundaries to transform the way we supply and consume energy, achieve mobility, and use land.

And they will need to do all of this very fast. It is now becoming increasingly clear that it is what we do in the next 15 years that matters most.

The technologies to avoid an even more unstable climate are already available. Deploying them rapidly is well within what we can afford. What is needed is an investment internationally of political imagination backed up by public resources on the scale that publics routinely expect for the more traditional aspects of national security.

But, as scientists like John Holdren are warning with mounting urgency, the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.

If we fail to see this threat to security very soon for what it is and make our dispositions accordingly, we will end up paying far more and experiencing more insecurity.”

We strongly agree.

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Dopo Al Gore che sta girando l’America con il film An Inconvenient Truth anche l’ex Presidente degli Stati Uniti, Bill Clinton, si sta muovendo per affrontare quella che è una delle emergenze più serie per il pianeta, anche se poco percepita.

Lo fa, forse in maniera meno spettacolare e un po più pragmatica, da politico di statura, e raccogliendo plausi e qualche critica.

Il 2 Agosto la Clinton Climate Initiative  in partnership con il Large Cities Climate Leadership Group, di cui fanno parte 40 tra le più grandi città del mondo tra cui Roma, hanno firmato un’intesa per “intreaprendere azioni pratiche e misurabili” per ridurre l’emissione di gas serra.

L’iniziziativa di Clinton segue di qualche giorno quella di Tony Blair che, sempre in California, ha stretto un accordo con il Governatore Arnold Shwarzenegger sullo stesso tema. Di buono c’è che l’ex Terminator, che è un repubblicano, sembri ingnorare che Bush, appena insediatosi alla Casa Bianca,  ha ritirato la firma dal protocollo di Kyoto che Bill Clinton aveva messo poco tempo prima.

Che si stia facendo strada l’idea che in tempi di crisi energetica e relativo caos geopolitico, ripensare le politiche ambientali e dello sviluppo sia una scelta obbligata?

Magari ma permettetemi di avanzare qualche dubbio. Senza scendere nel politico comunque e rinviando ai prossimi giorni qualche approfondimento vediamo cosa propone Clinton.

To enable partner cities to reduce energy use and green house gas emissions CCI will:

1. Create a purchasing consortium that will pool the purchasing power of the cities to lower the prices of energy saving products and accelerate the development and deployment of new energy saving and greenhouse gas reducing technologies and products. This will be similar to the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative total quality management approach that has substantially lowered AIDS drug prices for members of its purchasing consortium.
2. Mobilize the best experts in the world to provide technical assistance to cities to develop and implement plans that will result in greater energy efficiency and lower greenhouse gas emissions.
3. Create and deploy common measurement tools and internet based communications systems that will allow cities to establish a baseline on their greenhouse gas emissions, measure the effectiveness of the program in reducing these emissions and to share what works and does not work with each other.

L’approccio business oriented fa storcere il naso agli ambientalisti più convinti.

L’accento sul bisogno di coordinamento e costruzione di strumenti comuni per la misura e la valutazione delle emissioni ci sembra buono, invece. E’ lo stresso approccio che stiamo seguendo in T6 nel progetto ARMONIA.

Secondo il Clinton pensiero queste sono le azioni che si possono ragionelvomente intraprendere per raggiungere gli obiettivi:

As part of the first project, the CCI will create and deploy common measurement tools and internet based communications systems that will allow cities to establish a baseline on their greenhouse gas emissions, measure the effectiveness of the program in reducing these emissions and to share what works and does not work with each other.

The CCI suggests that cities take steps to increase efficiency and reduce emissions including:

• More energy efficient lighting for traffic and street lights.
• Building codes and practices that make use of more effective insulation, more energy efficient windows, more energy efficient heating and ventilation systems and more energy efficient lighting.
• More energy efficient municipal water and sanitation systems
• Localized, cleaner electric generation systems
• Use of bio-fuels or hybrid technologies for city buses, garbage trucks and other vehicles
• Schemes to reduce traffic congestion
• Reduction of emissions from city garbage dumps and the use of biomass to generate electricity
• More intelligent design of electric grids both across the city and within office and municipal buildings .

 

Vediamo come risponderanno le Città e Roma in particolare.

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Non nascondo che quando mi hanno detto che sarei dovuto andare ad Aksum e contribuire a riportere l’obelisco dove nel 1937 l’Italia delle colonie lo aveva sottratto ho provato forti emozioni.

Non capita spesso che il tuo lavoro ti metta in comunicazione con la storia, non almeno con una storia così forte. Italia ed Etiopia a distanza di settant’anni sono separate da secoli di storia e di sviluppo ma la memoria le riporta assai vicine.
Sapevo che nella valigia non ci avrei messo solo l’occorrente per il lavoro ed il soggiorno ma un sacco di storie sentite in famiglia, sin da piccolo.

E così è stato. Ad Aksum ho incontrato, seduto su una pietra, Haile. Era la pausa pranzo, e aspettava senza mangiare.

Più che la lingua a separarci c’era la storia ed il mio timore.

Avrà avuto anche lui un nonno andato in guerra contro gli italiani? O la guerra con l’Etiopia ha spazzato via tutto, persone e memoria? A sollevarmi un po, per fortuna, la banale considerazione che di fronte l’un l’altro c’erano due persone con in mano strumenti da lavoro e non fucili e che il rancio, lo potevamo dividere.

Mi sono avvicinato e gli ho offerto mezzo panino. Non abbiamo parlato nè della storia nè dell’obelisco ma quello che importa è che presto l’Etiopia riavrà un simbolo dell sua identità nazionale e un’occasione in più per accrescere il suo sviluppo.

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