Sustainable development in Europe and Italy. The ODA (Official development assistance).

The unsustainability of the European and Italian policies

The economic crisis is a good opportunity to reverse the trend.

Giovanni Coletta (At present Statistical officer (working) at the Ministry of Finance. Has a past as a researcher for the Institute for Protection and Environmental Research (ISPRA) and for the Italian National agency for new technologies, Energy and sustainable economic development (ENEA). He studied some italian territorial realities, looking for statistical indicators of local sustainability.

Four years after the EU strategy for sustainable development, it's time for reflection on its future development. It was fundamental for the development of strategies at national and regional levels.

Currently, almost all EU Member States have established national strategies for sustainable development based on international recommendations on best practices.

The coordinators of the national strategies for sustainable development bridges between the EU strategy and national strategies. The European Sustainable Development Network (ESDN) facilitates the exchange of best practices and experience with the Member States.

The EU strategy for sustainable development is a long-term strategy that can provide guidance and to report on major developments, while promoting a perspective reflection on the sustainability, but that also requires political action in the short term, bearing in mind that more than trying to obtain a stable balance, sustainable development is proposed as a dynamic concept, recognizing that changes are an inseparable part of society.

The current economic and financial crisis has shown that sustainability is a key factor for our financial systems and the entire economy. It affects all economic sectors, households, businesses and jobs.

The EU employment market situation continues to deteriorate, unemployment is increasing, job listings are declining and companies continue to announce heavy job cuts in a number of areas. Uncertainty continues to shorten the time.

We start from the 2009 report on the progress of the European Strategy of Sustainable Development, which recognizes 11 main indicators.

They were chosen to measure, overall, progress by the EU and individual member countries in terms of sustainable development, in relation to general and specific objectives defined in the EU Sustainable Development Strategy. In particular, an assessment of progress made since 2000 shows a rather mixed.

The situation is summarized in the table below, where information about Italian evolution is the result of a personal study of Eurostat data

The Italian situation is in most cases worse than the European Union as a whole. The “good land” is in the top positions if we look at life expectancy at 65 years, while the worst EU country if we look at the growth of GDP per capita. An indicator to chew on and that in this field we want to focus on, is  EU policy on ODA (Official Development Assistance).

This is one of the most difficult both for Europe and for Italy, since the intermediate target of 0.56% set for 2010 in terms of ratio between development aid and GDP is far, yet achievable, if we consider the Sweden value of 1,12. The Italian value in 2009 is 0.16 instead. Looking at the Italian and EU’s trend there is a downward trend since 2005 in the Italian case, the opposite trend to that of the European Union.

In recent years the EU has demonstrated its unequivocal commitment to sustainable development and is able to integrate this dimension of sustainability in many of his policies, but Europe needs a “new deal for a sustainable economy”, as stated Pierre Jonckheer. According to the Belgian economist, a sustainable EU has three key aspects to start with, things that make it different from a mere investment plan:

First, regulatory and fiscal instruments should facilitate a change of direction. They must ensure that some kind of activities have to decrease and other have to increase.

The second point is training, employment and conditions of payment.

The third point concerns the analysis of public debt and financing of the Green New Deal.

In light of these considerations, we can observe the situation in Italy.

The economic crisis undermines the current organization of the market. There is a strong conflict to be resolved in the public finances: the socialization of losses, namely the increase in debt resulting from the choice to save the banking system undo years of effort. This, however, offers a favorable climate for the introduction of public policies aimed at guiding consumer spending and investment, and accelerate the process of adapting industry to the needs of a sustainable economy. An opportunity not be missed.

The recent government budgetary measure does not seem to address towards a program of industrial restructuring. There is not a clear indication about the objective of a new model of sustainable development. The budgetary measure has not refinanced such tax breaks for energy savings, and also there is no obligation for the State to withdraw the excess of green certificates to companies that produce energy from renewable sources, making them collapse the price and thus discourage new investments. Investments that will look elsewhere.

Second point: are we investing in the knowledge society? Are we investing in research, education and vocational training courses? Are there guarantees for the career paths of workers, especially when there are lost jobs because of industrial restructuring?

The government seems to choose to remove some major research organizations, to hit workers' wages through collective bargaining and the blocking of seniority, to dismiss many temporary workers. And are (were) especially this type of researchers that gave the greater impetus towards a desirable change in trend.

Add that the school suffers and is not yet clear whether the recovery of 30% of the cuts, is actually designed to overcome the block progressions instead of seniority or the destination must be defined later.
Finally, the funding of the Green New Deal would mobilize private savings to finance economically sustainable projects. In Italy we have a good level of private savings (which explains the relative stability of the financial system) and this would be a good opportunity. The signals, as mentioned, however, are daunting.
One last point: the "risk of poverty - another indicator of sustainability report deterioration in Italy over 10 years ago. We are more or less at the level of Greece, but this means that the indicators remain red until sustainable products will be inaccessible to a large proportion of the population. The decision to promote certain products instead of other is not enough. Job creation will be limited by the inadequate level of "sustainable purchasing power" of low-income families. A crisis is always a good opportunity to redistribute income.