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PROJECT AGRI.2010-144
CAP and management of environmental disasters: The role of Agriculture
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
On October 1, 2009, the area of Messina experienced landslides and floods which caused serious damages and loss of 37 people.
Amongst the many causes of this event, most certainly, is the desertion of farming activities and the consequent deterioration of the areas exposed to erosion phenomena.
It is no by chance that the calamities that befell Messina have only interested the soil (surface layer) and not the under layer of parent material. In the hillsides affected by landslides were present agricultural terraces that should put in a steady state the surface waters.
The agricultural terraces are now abandoned and besides their degradation there is the degradation of the forestry and grazing soils due to the continuous fires that cause a lack of erosion control. The risks of soil erosion are also increasing, following the climate changes leading to rain aggressiveness.
What happened can therefore be considered a typical example of the social cost paid when farming no longer plays a role in protecting the land's hydro-geologic layout. The cost of these damages falls on the community.
Exposure to the risk of such social costs is enough alone to justify the cost the community is asked to bear to support the implementation of a Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
From 1992 onward, CAP has been renewed by means of four subsequent reforms that have radically changed the nature of the interventions in support of agriculture.
The new CAP, also thanks to the enhancement of the second pillar, is ever more directed at supporting agricultural multi functionality and the role agriculture plays on the land.
Taking all this into consideration, the Conference to be held in the Municipality of Messina intends to support the following information activities, aimed at highlighting how:
the recovery of areas hit by calamities has to happen first of all through the reinstatement of agriculture as an activity aimed at ensuring environmental protection and preventing other disasters, favouring economic diversification, thus creating job and income opportunities to the resident population;
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the new CAP has the necessary means to support types of agriculture aimed at protecting the environment, multi functionality and, in wider terms, meeting the various needs that can arise in relation to the land characteristics.
The amount the tax payers are asked to pay to finance CAP is widely justified by the task that, thanks to the support guaranteed by CAP itself, agriculture can carry out for the community, preventing much higher social costs, like those arisen by the Messina disaster.
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