The great thirst of the last year is just a taste of what awaits Sardinia, a land which, like the other countries bordering the Mediterranean, suffers and will suffer the heaviest effects of climate change. "This is no longer an extraordinary event, we must begin to consider it normal and think that it can only get worse", warns Pier Paolo Roggero, former director of the Agriculture department of the University of Sassari.
Heat waves, very long periods of drought, violent rains «have always been there in Sardinia, but the point is that today they are increasingly recurring. We have no alternatives: we must adapt, creating the conditions in which, even in a crisis situation like the current one, we are able to supply water."
Currently in Baronia and lower Gallura the stop to irrigation has lasted since January and, while the water emergency risks precipitating problems of public order, the further restrictions imposed days ago for farmhouses and accommodation facilities outside inhabited centers have been suspended for a week.
At the summit convened in the Region by President Alessandra Todde with the mayors of the area and representatives of the water bodies, there was talk of restoring wells and hillside lakes, interconnections and works to contain the enormous waste along the pipelines, the 51 .3% of the resource provided.
But the interventions to be implemented are indicated in black and white in the pages of the "Regional strategy for adaptation to climate change", a study developed in 2019 by the scientific committee (Universities of Cagliari and Sassari, including Pier Paolo Roggero among the members) with the Department of the Environment. Sardinia was among the first regions in Italy to have a plan.
Piera Serusi
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