Introduction address at the EFCA Symposium in Strasburg Discours d’introduction du Symposium EFCA de Strasbourg
Authorities, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,
authority; air pollution is commonly associated tourban or industrialized areas for which urgent local
It is a great pleasure and an honour to welcome
measures are requested, while climate change
each of you in this prestigious and symbolic place. We
sounds more linked to remote desert or deforested
are grateful to the European Parliament for the hospi-
areas or glacial zones which need questionable
tality and for the opportunity given to us to debate in
global commitments (the GHG’s concept is not yet
the heart of the European policy an issue that we
completely perceived even if the public opinion is
Last year an in-depth discussion within EFCA
In other words air pollution and climate change
came to a conclusion that measures to limit climate
have run on parallel rails for long time**. In recent
change below tolerable levels should be conceived
years the scientific community started to convince
within an integrated approach with existing and future
itself that the two environmental problems should
policies in other public domains, notably in clean air.
better be faced through a systematic and integrated
Air pollution and climate change became prominent
approach able to identify co-benefit and no-regret
issues in different moments, for different reasons, and
had distinct histories. Either in several European
I do not have to present any EFCA’s position on
countries or in USA, air pollution problems emerged in
the issue, since EFCA commits to open meetings and
the sixties in a contest of certainty, due to the evident
confrontations, like this Symposium, the research of
harmful effects on public health, while the climate
reasonable and feasible solutions to share in dialogue
change problems have been emerging some time
with different parties in Europe and to bring to the
later in a perspective of probability, that our civilisation
attention of the regulatory bodies of the Union.
in the long term could have affected somehow achange in climate, through a switch (downward or
I would profit of this chance to convey some
upward) of the Earth’s surface average temperature.
personal thoughts particularly on one of the aspects
As a matter of fact the two issues differ, or are
suggested for our debate, concerning the temporal
perceived to differ, in several other characters. In
and geographical scales which could result more
general, air pollutants are easily reactive substances
effective and efficient for implementing integrated
with short lifetime, while greenhouse gases are, with
few exceptions, hardly reactive with long lifetimes; air
We are currently urged not only by air pollution
pollution is blamed for adverse local short-term
and climate change, but also by matters concerning
effects, while climate change is expected could raise
sustainable development, energy consumption, waste
difficult situations at global level sometimes in future;
water, urbanisation, solid wastes, mobility, public
air pollution is on the agenda of any local and national
health, biodiversity, desertification, etc., each of
recognizable and recognised authority, while for
which, from time to time, is displayed as the central
climate change it is hard to figure out a worldwide
problem or the most urgent one, resulting deceptive
* University of L’Aquila, Italy. President, EFCA.
** A common birthday may be assumed for both, air pollution and climate change. The first environmental law of the industrialage has been the Alkali Act adopted in Great Britain in 1863. It required at least a 95% condensation of the HCI released to theatmosphere without any control from the LeBlanc process for the production of the sodium carbonate. The Gossage Tower adop-ted, able to condensate about 99% of the effluent acid, has been the first end-of-pipe technology and the first win-lose solution.
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for the public opinion. The point is that all those
The growing urban areas everywhere in the world,
matters are linked each others, together with social
in large cities or megacities, entails the increasing
and economical implications, in a kind of entangled
demand of energy, potable water, chemical products,
yarn ball which we would like to work out.
land for urbanization, roads, mobility, and, in a syner-
The aim of this Symposium is not to focus the
gic way, the increasing production of solid wastes,
attention only on a couple of those matters, but to
waste water, environmental impact, air pollution and
reasonably assume air pollution and climate change
as the head and the end of the yarn along which all
On the other side the abandonment of rural acti -
the other environmental aspects come out. Therefore,
vities causes degradation of the lands triggering the
to research co-benefits for air pollution and climate
soil erosion and the modification of the water cycle,
change means to look for solutions preferably to the
which, on their turn, contribute again to both air pollu-
tion through erosion of fine dust and climate change.
As a working example I would like to mention a
As a result of the migration process both the rural
situation occurred on a small geographic scale which
poverty and the degraded life in the outskirts of large
however anticipated current events in the world.
cities are exacerbated, threatening not only social lifeand economy but environment as well.
In 1994 United Nations adopted a Convention to
Combat Desertification which was ratified by 191
Going back to the Italian hotspots mentioned
Countries. In compliance with the commitments
before, after forty years the situation is that some rural
accepted with the ratification of the UN Convention,
areas are still abandoned and the air quality in the
Italy prepared its National Action Plan which, surpri-
industrial and urban areas does not yet comply with
singly, showed that some areas in the south, in the
the European standards, at least for ozone and PM.
regions of Puglia, Sicily and Sardinia regions, were
Furthermore, an important contribution to the local air
particularly sensitive to desertification, along the defi-
pollution now is due to non-local sources, anthropo-genic and/or natural, through long-range transport
nition given by the same Convention [1].
phenomena. The remaining margin to reduce the
The news is that the discovered situations were
industrial emissions will become unimportant once all
not a consequence of an occasional early local
the plants will fit the Best Available Technologies.
climate change, though those areas are characterised
Similarly, the process of technological improvement of
by low annual rainfall. They were the result of a social
conventional vehicles to reduce emissions will run out
revolution which started in the sixties due to large
sooner or later. Then it will be ever more difficult to
industrial settlements in neighbouring areas which
find out additional effective local measures to improve
employed several thousands of workers removed
air quality while the towns will continue to grow.
from farming activities. It was easy to persuade
For half a century, and still today, all the efforts
farmers to abandon low fertile soils together with
have been conceived to reduce industrial environ-
livestock for a more stable and profitable job in industry.
mental impact or to improve transport and mobility in
At that time the national policy used to encourage the
urban areas while nothing or very little it seems has
development of industry rather than agriculture.
apparently been done for the abandoned areas, now
The consequence of that policy was that a huge
number of polluting sources has been located in quite
If both sides of the medal are not adequately
restricted areas, a migration phenomenon towards
considered and we continue to worry mainly (or only)
towns has been encouraged and broad rural areas
for urban and industrialised areas without any atten-
have been abandoned, causing a contribution both to
tion to the increasing poor and degraded lands in the
short term air pollution and to long term climate
world, in very few decades it could be too late to draw
back the environmental policy. This means that our
This happens today all over the world at much
attention may not currently be confined to the reduc-
larger geographic scale and once again as a conse-
tion of emissions of pollutants influencing both air
quence of social problems rather than of climate
pollution and climate change, the latter of which of
change. In North Africa, since the mid-1990s onward
course is crucial, but we must look around also to the
a massive migration towards the Mediterranean
causes which produce the growing demand of energy
coast, and partly towards European countries, has
and mobility and to the consequences on the environ-
been observed from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and
ment, that is our attention must take into account
sub-Saharan’s countries. The rural population in the
countries overlooking the Mediterranean see is
A policy in this direction, for example, should
dramatically reducing. A voluntary or forced migration
prevent the increasing gathering of the population in
from countryside, pushed by persecution, violence,
limited areas of the Earth, promote and preserve
civil wars, country’s instability, economic decline,
small communities in towns or villages everywhere, in
takes place in several regions of Africa, central
developed and developing countries. This is possible
America and Asia [2, 3]. While a couple of centuries
through integrated projects conceived to solve the
ago the urban population in the world was few
local problems in their whole, provided that the envi-
percents of the global population, in 2007 it exceeded
ronmental aspects are internalized in the cost-benefit
balance, in terms, for example, of provision of water
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for the agriculture, exploitation of biomass from wood-
change due to the import of products which may imply
land due to periodic selective cutting of woods, bio -
a long distance transport. It may be thought that it is
diversity preservation, reduction of fire probability,
no time for trade protection, but for the environment
reduction of soil erosion, respect and preservation of
yes, it is. Most likely for a huge number of products
local natural and cultural peculiarities, less petroleum
the import/export could not be justified if the environ-
consumption, less CO2 production, etc. If these bene-
mental costs were internalized. This is also true for
fits are not taken in due account of course there is no
several farming products which could easily grow in
way to justify any funding for projects in that direction
our lands. Under the WTO rules there are no specific
(for example through Clean Development Mecha
agreements dealing with the environment, even if it is
allowed to members to adopt trade-related measures
Let’s make a couple of trivial examples of
for the protection of the environment [5]. Within the
solutions which take to a different view of an environ-
world trade domain, for example for natural food
products, great opportunities of co-benefits could beachieved with a policy which promote local produc-
A wind power generator of 3 MW in one year may
tions everywhere in the world and discourage the
produce 4 500 MWh, based on average of 1 500 h/
import/export, thus internalising at least the transport
year, that is it may cover the consumption of about
625 people in Europe (assuming an average of7 200 kWh/y pro capita). We are aware of the envi-
To conclude, I believe we should give a strong
ronmental advantage of this renewable source inso-
message to our regulatory bodies that co-benefits for
much as to justify grant aids and subsidies by the
the environment as a whole do not come only fromemission trading, renewable energy sources or low-
governments. What about the benefit if we install the
emission vehicles but may be achieved, in an effec-
same generator in a poor village in a developing
tive and strategic way, in any aspect of our life, in any
country. It could satisfy the energy requirements of
domain, for which an integrated approach should be
some thousands of people and discourage them to
emigrate. The benefits in the second case would beenormously higher if we internalize all those negative
This would be the proper way to apply the “pol luter
aspects produced by migration in large cities and all
pays” principle with respect to the environment
the positive aspects if those people remain in their
preservation, to foster integrated solutions, to gain
own lands. The first solution is an example of co-
multi-benefits, to satisfy the community’s expecta-
benefits in our backyard; the second would be a
tions, to eradicate poverty which is believed to be “the
strategic multi-benefit solution at global level.
greatest global challenge facing the world today andan indispensable requirement for sustainable deve-
The European Union has been adopting ambitious
environmental standards, together with voluntaryinstruments like Ecolabel or Integrated Product Policy
I am confident that in a couple of days this
in order to promote the production of goods environ-
Symposium will be able to add some important value
mentally friendly and in safety. However, as a direct
to the current international debate on the co-benefits
consequence of that policy, some productions are
concept and deliver to the European policy makers
moved in developing countries, which turn a blind eye
to environment, safety and sometimes to ethic
On behalf of EFCA and personally I wish to thank
aspects. This policy reduces the impact on our air
very much each of you for coming and for the contri-
quality, but at the same time charges the climate
References
1. Italy – National Report, Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention to Combat
Desertification, 3rd session, Bonn, Germany, 27 April to 6 May 2005.
2. Moulin C, Chiapello I. Impact of human-induced desertification on the intensification of Sahel dust emis-
sion and export over the last decades, Geophysical Res. Letters, Vol. 33, 2006.
3. Benoit G, Comeau A. A Sustainable Future for the Mediterranean. The Blue Plan’s Environment and
development outlook, Earthscan, London, 2005.
4. Urban sprawl in Europe. The ignored challenge, EEA Report n° 10/2006.
5. http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/envir_e/envt_rules_intro_e.htm
6. http://www.unccd.int/cop/reports/un/2006/undp-eng.pdf
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