Italy has improved on 9 of the 17 Agenda 2030 goals, including the reduction of inequalities, but is falling behind on poverty and climate change. The data from the new Asvis 2019 report.
On the path towards achieving the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the so-called Agenda 2030, Italy is improving in some areas — specifically 9: health, gender equality, economic and employment conditions, innovation, inequalities, urban conditions, sustainable production and consumption models, quality of governance and international cooperation — but is worsening in another 6 — poverty, sustainable food and agriculture, water and sanitation, the energy system, the state of the seas and terrestrial ecosystems — and is merely stable on education and the fight against climate change. This is what emerges from the Asvis 2019 report — the Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development — presented on 4 October in Rome in the presence of numerous institutional representatives, most notably the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, who on several occasions during his term has had the opportunity to speak about the importance of sustainability that is "environmental but also social, to reduce inequalities".
According to Asvis, the delays in sectors crucial to the transition towards a model that is sustainable in economic, social and environmental terms are evident, and inequalities — including territorial ones — remain very strong. Italy therefore remains far from the path set out in 2015, when it committed to implementing Agenda 2030 and the Paris Agreement. In particular, with regard to Goal 13 — the fight against global warming — the Asvis 2019 report records positive data up to 2014, followed by a deterioration in the subsequent three-year period in terms of CO2 emissions (three-quarters of which come from the production system).
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Despite the alarm raised by the Special Report 15 (SR15) published on 6 October 2018 by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Ipcc) on the effects of a 1.5-degree rise in average global temperature by the end of the century, Italy's Piano nazionale di adattamento ai cambiamenti climatici (Pnacc) remains stalled, lacking the implementation procedures and the disbursement of financial support to local authorities without which the plan becomes irrelevant; and the Italian parliament, Asvis recalls, in June approved a motion rejecting the declaration of a climate emergency, already adopted by other states and local authorities in Italy and Europe. On a positive note, the 2019 budget law restored responsibility for hydrogeological instability to the Ministry of the Environment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax2vwBs8t5o
"The new government has introduced sustainability into the political agenda and its programme guidelines include some proposals put forward by Asvis itself: from the incorporation of the principle of sustainable development into the Constitution to the launch of an Urban Agenda for Sustainable Development, from using Agenda 2030 to redesign how the socio-economic system functions to assessing the economic, social and environmental impact of legislative measures, from cutting environmentally harmful subsidies to legislation to eliminate pay differentials between men and women performing the same tasks. These announcements must be followed by concrete actions — declared Asvis president Pierluigi Stefanini in any case there is some good news: Stefanini — to put Italy on the path of sustainable development."
Italy is not alone on this difficult journey, because it is the entire planet — despite the promises and the premises — that is not on a path of sustainable development. Four years after the adoption of Agenda 2030, the measures adopted by individual countries, the private sector and international organisations do not appear to be equal to the challenge before us. The Asvis report shows how the new European Commission too has promised a significant change of pace, with an action programme for the next five years built around a vision in which economic, social and environmental policies appear consistently oriented towards the goal of making it a world champion of sustainable development: the next report will clarify whether these promises have been kept, or at least set in motion.
