AICA to Berlusconi: Communicating with citizens improves Environment

Transposition of Directive 98/2008/EC: AICA takes side to sustain environmental communication and public participation

AICA (International Association for Environmental Communication) officially sent to Italian Government and Parliament its position paper regarding the transposition of the Directive 98/2008/EC (compulsory by 2012), aimed to open a constructive dialogue on the importance of environmental communication and of citizens’ participation into the planning and programming processes of integrated garbage cycle.

The AICA document – sent to the Prime Minister President Silvio Berlusconi; to the Ministers Prestigiacomo, Ronchi, Frattini, Tremonti e Scajola and to the presidents of Environment Commission and Productive Activities of Chamber of deputies and Senate of Italian Republic – refers in particular to article 31 of the Directive, that claims:

…Member States shall ensure that relevant stakeholders and authorities and the general public have the opportunity to participate in the elaboration of the waste management plans and waste prevention programmes, and have access to them once elaborated…

AICA’s proposal for the National transposition of the Directive stresses the points from 5 to 16 of the Annex IV of the Directive (provision of information on waste prevention techniques; organisation of training; use of awareness campaigns; use of voluntary agreements, consumer/producer panels; promotion of creditable eco-labels; promotion of the reuse and/or repair of appropriate discarded products) and is divided into the following main points:

A) To guarantee the participation:
- To establish an ad hoc fund to different planning levels (regions, Provinces, Municipalities);
- To predispose a specific annex that lists the potential environmental communication tools and strategies.

B) To give a complete fulfilment to the EC Directive and especially to the parts about communication and participation:

- Management of a research/monitoring of best environmental communication practises about integrated garbage’s recycle at different levels of the hierarchy (prevention, re-use, separate collection and recycling, other recovery);
- Management of a social study/research on the “collective imaginary” about waste question aimed to build shared and useful basis for an effective communication;
- Starting from previous data collection, elaboration of appropriate indicators of effectiveness;
- Among these indicators, definition of appropriate economic tools;
- Creation of a specific National fund for environmental communication on waste issues;
- Commitment of planning/programming public actors (Regions, ATO, Provinces, etc.) to draw up an Environmental Communication Plan (ECP) to be attached to other plan tools. The ECP should respect the indicatory and foresee a specific formation plan in order to create either a specific environmental communicator role among people who deal and work with planning or a good background of skills and relational abilities referring to the formation of a sense of responsibility;
- Commitment that these plans have their own funding.

«Participation consist in cognitive aspects (generally conveyed by communication and information), procedural aspects (generally guaranteed by focus group involvement, juries of citizens, formal consultations etc.) and aspects dealing with civicness, in other words, the learning of the value of responsibility towards other people and environment. Participation without this third leg is lame – Roberto Cavallo, President of AICA, claims – indeed it is not only shape (access to), but also content (values and rules)».