Prandini: “US$ 12 billion is needed over four years to combat drought”

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Drought has already cost Italian agriculture €5 billion. Add to that the €6 billion that the lack of rain cost in 2022 and the €6.5 billion that floods caused last year, and climate change is a price our country can no longer pay. “Investment in water infrastructure is urgent,” says Ettore Prandini, president of Coldiretti. How much? Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini recently announced €12 billion in resources for storage basins, “but €1 billion a year is not enough – Prandini claims – these infrastructures must be built within four years”.

So hurry up. But this is not even about acting alone: ”In all this we are focused on working as an Italian country, but climate change is a common problem that needs to be managed at European level”, said Prandini. Regarding the drought, President Coldiretti proposed that resources need to be allocated from Brussels: “The EU is regrouped but committed to the climate challenge”.

Six years ago, you and the Ambi Reclamation Consortium proposed a plan to build 10,000 reservoirs by 2030, increasing Italy’s rainwater recycling from the current 11% to 30%. What happened to that plan?

The plan is being discussed, but there are no executed projects yet. This is despite the fact that work in some basins could start as early as tomorrow, because the authorizations are all there. Some individual reclamation consortiums have already started investing on their own, but an infrastructure plan of this magnitude cannot be entrusted to individual consortiums. Our country must abandon the rhetoric of considering only emergencies. We need to return to the question of planning infrastructure investments, what is needed today is an extraordinary investment plan. As for reservoirs, we should start with large-scale water storage basins, which have the advantage of also being used for the production of hydroelectric power and the installation of floating photovoltaic panels. France retains 37% of the country’s rainwater, Spain 28%. We have only 11%: wasting all this water, for a country like us focused on international markets, is a luxury we can no longer afford. In France, the pipelines are not decentralized, while in Italy the average is 45%, with a peak of 80%. It is shameful that there are decentralized points of this magnitude, and that water managers end their financial statements with huge profits: these profits should be reinvested.