It all ends up in the same place you say?

Monday 11^th January 2010 

 

Italy & Sustainability 

Time flies when your having fun! So I spent the first half (not a very long half) of my summer semester in Italy studying Sustainability in the Cinque Terre. I cant even begin to describe the Cinque Terre because you just wont believe me. You still wont believe me when you see photos so I will just talk about some of the interesting things we learnt in the 11 days I was there. Firstly, the course is excellent & would highly recommend for any student studying Environmental Management.

 

Overlooking Riomaggiore 

 

As beautiful as the Cinque Terre is, it has its issues that not even the common tourist would see which is a pity. Firstly (and VERY briefly) many years ago the people of the land started building terraces to make use of the very steep land. The owners of the terraces would grow various grapes, olives and other saleable produce. However as the years went on, the owners of the land that contained terraces would either move to nearby large towns for work as the Cinque Terre was difficult to live in due to no work (or very little) being available, or just too much hard labour required to farm on the land. What also happened was that the owners would pass away & may or may not have left the land for their children (if they had any). However their children were encouraged to get an education & not have to work the hard life of their parents. Thus over the years the terraces were abandoned & land was degraded by increasing invasive species population. The terraces are what prevents landslides from occurring in the towns, so once the terraces are abandoned there is heightened risk of land slide to the nearby towns. The major towns are located at the bottom of the hills along the Mediterranean Coast, which causes a concern during high rainfall as land from above can easily fall onto the towns killing many people. 

 

To cut a long story short, the Cinque Terre faces many issues such as terrace abandonment, sustainability of the local Park products which help fund The National Park (which is world heritage listed under UNESCO), HUGE problem with invasive tree species- being Maritime Pine which has taken over Chestnut & Oak tree populations and caused high acidity of soil on land & instability of remaining terraces. There is an increase in Wild Boar population and the uncertainty of future wine production in the area due to decrease in workforce/skill and the most (not so nice fact of all) was the witnessing of large amount of rain fall & seeing the storm water drains connected to the sewage drains! The Med shore looked abit frothy that afternoon & the next day!

 

 

Terraces many years ago                          Abandoned Terraces today

 

It was an eye opener!!! Here I was traveling miles away from home, to get to a beautiful place along the Italian Riviera, which I cant describe because its just so beautiful and the first thing I could think of was ‘this place is just too beautiful to have any problems’! I couldn’t bring myself to understand how we were going to study sustainability while we were all in complete awe of the place. But we finally did & it was well worth the long & costly plane trip! There were a few weird occurrences while I was in Italy:

•       In Florence, there were plenty of large recycle wheelie bins. However no actual small recycle bins could be seen in the streets! The bins in the streets were your average street bin with the black plastic bag (which is NOT so average in Australia anymore)….so…what would be the point of having these recycle wheelie bins, if there are no recycling bins in the street? How do they separate the rubbish from the recycling?
•        In Rome your lucky to see any recycling bins, or ANY bins for that matter! I walked about 5 blocks until I found a street bin.
•       While we were traveling to Nice we had a stop over for a few hours in Genova which is about a 2 hr train ride from Riomaggiore in the Cinque Terre. One of my traveling companions, Lucia who was also our interpreter for the course was doing the rounds on the platform to find a ‘general’ waste bin. All that was available were (what they call) tin recycle, aluminum recycle bins etc (see photo). She decided to go up to the train platform officer & ask him where the general rubbish bin was. He replied by pointing to the tin recycling bin, to which Lucia stated the obvious to him ‘that’s for tin only’….his response was a giggle & ‘doesn’t matter, it all ends up in the same place’. Lucia, Nigell (professor traveling to Nice also) & myself just looked at each other, thinking that we just spent 11 days studying sustainability & here we are told something completely opposite to achieving sustainability!! We got this response quite a number of times while we were in Italy.
   

They have all sorts of bins in Italy 

 

I later found out that Europe’s recycling programs are a tad behind Australia’s. I wouldn’t say a tad, I would say more like a century behind! Well at least they are trying I guess. Their government system & structure doesn’t help the situation…if you think Australia has too much red tape, well (in Italy at least) the people are drowning & gagging on red tape! Over there, the Mayor is considered to be (almost) royalty, while Ministers are royalty! Bizarre!!! 

 

All in all, it was a FANTASTIC trip made abit more adventurous when your on your own. In Australia you probably wouldn’t see me traveling on a V-line or any train for that matter after sunset. While I was in Italy, I seemed to have always ended up on the train way past 2300hrs! Not great when you have 3 huge suitcases of shopping & clothes…can’t exactly make a ‘quick’ exit. 

 

SES’ing 

We are ramping up our operational readiness for the summer season. Quite impressed with SES assisting CFA in the Emergency Command Centre (or is it coordination?)- they keep changing the name, but it was previously called the IECC. They have their phantom rosters during the hot days, just incase something was to happen, as well as opening the Command Centre during severe weather warnings, which have so far turned out to be no so exciting for the Footscray Unit. All good practice for the real thing. 

 

Before I jetted over to Italy I was lucky enough to get onto the Managing Floods Using AIIMS course which is run by VICSES. Very useful course which takes you through AIIMS & how to apply it to a flood scenario as AIIMS was initially based around fire. Generally all the courses you go to that talk about AIIMS (which is all of our operations based courses) usually talk about it in relation to fire, but as VICSES rolls out the ‘Implementing AIIMS across VICSES’ program which currently is being delivered by David Tucek, it is becoming more integrated into flood, storm & rescue scenarios which makes it A LOT easier to understand for SES volunteers & staff. Since the Footscray Unit has one of the biggest flood risks in Melbourne we managed to get a few Footscray members on the course, which will help boost our operational intelligence at the Unit.

 

Dave, Lynda, Tucek, Me, Marion

 

Where to from here??? 

Well… I cant reveal all just yet, as I MAY have some BIG news…but until then hopefully up until June 30 it wont be as crazy as last year.

 

The Footscray Unit will continue to find ways to improve training & retain members. We have a new intake due to happen soon…so I will keep you posted on the progress.

 

So far we have managed to keep all the members that started in July 2009 which was our last intake of 14 members, and from the previous intake to that (Nov 2008- 16 members) we lost one member due to starting a new job & newborn, and one went on leave recently as she just had twins. So we are doing pretty well =)

 

2010- VICSES Footscray Unit 

 

Ciao x

Ruby     

 

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