ASviS is Born, the Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development
800 million people living in extreme poverty; 250 million illiterate children; 700 million do not have clean water; 200 million unemployed; 60 million in slavery; the richest 0.5% have 90% of the world’s wealth and 50% of people do not have a secondary education. 8% of animal species have already disappeared and 22% are at risk, 12 million hectares of desert per year: and the weight of plastic in our oceans is greater than that of fish. This is the world we live in, presented by Enrico Giovannini, economics professor, former minister and president of ISTAT.
To address this situation, declared by scientists to be unsustainable, not only environmentally but also socially, economically and institutionally, in September 2015 the member countries of the United Nations approved the new Global Agenda for Sustainable Development by 2030, explicitly stating within it 17 goals and 169 targets to be achieved for development that respects the environment and society.
With the birth of ASviS, the Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development, Italy ratifies its commitment to this long-term path, thanks to the will of 80 of the most important institutions, associations and networks of civil society. Presented for the first time to the country on March 11th in the Sala della Regina of the Chamber of Deputies and promoted by the Unipolis Foundation and the University of Rome Tor Vergata, ASviS aims to build, through the peculiarities of the work of its members, a strong awareness of the importance of the Global Agenda and mobilize all the different actors to achieve its objectives
Among the entities constituting the Alliance, there is also the Pubblicità Progresso Foundation, which as its own contribution proposes the next campaign dedicated to “Sustainability, Sobriety, Solidarity” whose objective is to try to spread the culture of sustainability through the promotion of virtuous behaviors. The portal www.ciriesco.it will contain decalogues of tips for living a sustainable life and ways to implement them, together with case-histories that can demonstrate that it is useful to put them into practice not only for a responsibility towards the planet and nature, but also for the benefit that each citizen can derive for themselves, for their pockets, for the future of their children.
As stated by Enrico Giovannini, spokesperson for the Alliance: “The objectives that Italy has committed to drawing finally outline a concept of sustainable development that goes beyond the purely environmental dimension, to which it has been, for too long, mistakenly reduced. Pope Francis in his Encyclical Laudato si ‘underlines that the culture that generates pollution and environmental disasters is the same that generates poverty and social injustice. The 2030 Global Agenda is an opportunity to change this culture, responding to the invitation of the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, addressed to the present generation to take on the task of transforming our societies. With humility but also with enthusiasm and courage, the Alliance is committed to doing its part.”
