Palermo has been organizing a Festival for World Earth Day (Earth Day Palermo) for over ten years, which over time has become an eagerly awaited event for the city and beyond. This year the Festival is internationalising, becoming a central event on climate and the environment, not only for Sicily, but for all the Mediterranean countries that are suffering the devastating impacts of climate change. Earth Day Med is promoted by the Rizoma Foundation and Fuori Orario Production, in collaboration with the Culture Department of the city of Palermo and the Center for Sustainability and Ecological Transition of the University of Palermo. Strategic partners are the Heinrich Boll Foundation and the international think tank ECCO.
From 18 to 22 April in various places in the city, the festival it will host screenings, workshops, debates, book presentations, artistic events and an international conference on the challenges of the Mediterranean.
The first “Climate Festival in the Mediterranean” highlights the risks of increasingly high temperatures, extreme drought, widespread fires, rising sea levels, with serious repercussions on economic growth, trade and social stability and politics, putting the lives of thousands of human beings at risk.
The “Redistribute Extinction” campaign, created on the occasion of Earth Day Med by the international artist Jonas Staal, is a symbol of the commitment and fight against the predators of the burning lands. Is there a way to turn the narrative of humanity's extinction against those systems that cause it in the first place? If something must become extinct, shouldn't it be the fossil industries and the neocolonial extractive mentality that have brought us to the edge of survival today? These are the questions that the artist Jonas Staal tried to answer by interpreting a series of painted posters, which will be displayed on billboards and buses in the city, with the aim of raising awareness of how much the climate catastrophe and its enormous impact on armed conflicts and on the scarcity of resources have a disproportionate impact on the South of the world, on indigenous and black populations, on women, on minorities and on the poor. The images, in particular, aim to raise responsibility for the plague of fires and floods in Sicily.
There is no better place than Palermo and Sicily to reflect on the complexity of the current situation in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean is one of the most sensitive and vulnerable places to climate change. And this is precisely the topic covered during the international conference “The Mediterranean as a climate change hotspot”, which will take place on Monday 22 April at the University of Palermo. The Mediterranean area has in fact been defined as a climate hotspot, i.e. an area in which the impacts of climate change manifest themselves more rapidly than in other parts of the planet. Nonetheless, there is not yet a common voice representing the Mediterranean countries, not even within the spaces of climate diplomacy. The Mediterranean countries find themselves facing the most complex challenge of the contemporary world, deeply divided, with different means and instruments and therefore different degrees of vulnerability. Among others, Grammenos Mastrojeni, Deputy Secretary General for Energy and Climate Action of the Union for the Mediterranean – UfM, author with the physicist Antonello Pasini of the volume Greenhouse Effect, War Effect will talk about it; Laury Haytayan, Middle East and North Africa Director NRGI; Alice Aureli, UNESCO Water Sciences Division and Fuad Bateh, water law expert and negotiator at the UN.
Many themes addressed during the days of the Festival, from risk management to ecological transition, expressed in the founding elements of our lives: water, fire and earth. Energy issues are addressed with fire, which are fundamental for talking about the climate crisis because the use of fossil fuels is the primary cause. The pillar dedicated to energy issues is organized by the climate think tank ECCO. The panel dedicated to water is organized under the scientific supervision of the Marie Curie researcher, Francesca Greco, former gender and water officer for the UNESCO World Water Assessment Program and expert in virtual water and international water policies. Finally, the pillar on Biodiversity is edited by Annalisa Corrado, engineer, author and activist of the Kyoto club.
And then biophilia, forest bathing and protection of forest heritage, with an immersive experience to discover the benefits of exposure to the forest. A Forest Bathing thermal immersion demonstrates how simply approaching nature and trees can be enormously effective in promoting individual health and strengthening the immune system, highlighting calming, draining, antibacterial and antiviral effects. For the docu-film section there will be the screening “Blue Carbon”, which explores the idea that the oceans and the organisms present in the waters can absorb a greater quantity of carbon than trees. The event is organized in collaboration with Wake Up Europe. The journalist and director Annalisa Piras introduces the documentary.
#Earth #Day #Med #Climate #Festival #Mediterranean #Palermo
