ROME (ITALPRESS) – From the stop to the use of cotton buds to the battle to stop the environmental havoc of illegal fishing of dates from the sea; from the fight against spadare to the establishment of Italy’s first Marine Protected Area, that of Ustica: these are just some of the battles won by Marevivo, the historic association, now a Foundation, for the protection of the sea that celebrates 40 years of activity this year. Important successes that have led to more stringent laws for the protection of our seas. So many goals still need to be achieved to ensure a future for our Blue Planet. This was the theme of the celebratory day held today at the historic floating headquarters on the Tiber, an occasion to take stock of the activities of these four decades.It was 1985 when, from an intuition of Rosalba Giugni, Marevivo was born with a precise mission: to defend the marine ecosystem. Aware of the need to preserve this immense resource, at a time when many were unaware of its essential role – at the time there was still no talk of pollution, overfishing and climate crisis – Marevivo launched the first beach and seabed cleaning activities to remove plastic, garbage and abandoned nets, which at the time seemed to be the sea’s only enemies. In those days, the drift toward which the Planet was fast heading was not yet imagined; only in recent decades has the enormous scale of the environmental problem, the impacts on the oceans and human health been understood.Through the national and international campaigns deployed over the years, the Foundation has achieved extraordinary goals. The protection of Posidonia oceanica at the European level, the law on the banning of so-called “spadare” nets, which was extended from Italy to Europe, the ban on fishing for dates of the sea and holothurians, organisms essential for the maintenance of biodiversity. Marevivo helped establish Italy’s first Marine Protected Area in Ustica, Sicily, in 1988 and in the decades that followed worked to ensure that other areas could enjoy the same protection regime. Today there are 32 MPAs also thanks to his continuous work.The Foundation was also among the first entities in Italy to draw attention to the harmful impact of single-use plastic dispersed in the sea and the danger of microplastics, whose presence has even been detected in human organs, endangering human health. Thanks to this awareness-raising work and parliamentary lobbying, as of 2019 a law in Italy will ban the use of microplastics in rinse-off cosmetics and the production of plastic cotton-fiocs. In 2022, as a crowning achievement of the many battles carried out in recent years, Marevivo managed to obtain the enactment of the “Salvamare Law,” each article of which represents a concrete action to protect the marine ecosystem. One of the essential elements present in this law is the recognition of the need to disseminate knowledge about the environment and the sea in schools of all levels, a theme on which the Foundation’s work is based, which for years has been promoting environmental education projects in schools, involving tens of thousands of students. According to Marevivo, it is essential to spread greater awareness, especially among the younger generations, of the need to protect the sea for the very survival of humans on the Planet. Not least is the commitment to safeguard the Gaiola Underwater Park – established in 2002 thanks to Marevivo – a valuable natural and archaeological heritage, included within the European Union’s “Natura 2000 Network,” recently threatened by the risk of doubling the overflow discharge. Despite being a Marine Protected Area it is under attack by unacceptable political decisions, which Marevivo and other environmental groups have legally opposed.Marevivo’s latest international campaign, its sixteenth, on ecological transition “Only One. One Planet, One Ocean, One Health,” which toured the world aboard the school ship Amerigo Vespucci, encompasses all the issues to deal with the impacts that are undermining the balance achieved over nearly 4 billion years that has allowed life on Earth.These are just a few of the complex battles waged in recent years, demonstrating the Foundation’s constant commitment and always at the forefront of conservation of the sea and its precious organisms. But there is still much to be done to counter the serious problems that plague the sea including: the climate crisis, overfishing, pollution, loss of biodiversity and deep-sea mining. “I am Neapolitan, the daughter of shipowners and a diver. When plastics arrived 40 years ago to deface my wonderful sea, I did not turn my head away and together with Carmen di Penta we set off on the great adventure, founding a movement to defend what we loved,” says Rosalba Giugni, Marevivo President. “From a vision to a method, our path in this long time has gone from beach cleanups, our first actions defined as useless, to laws to protect the marine ecosystem. We realized that to make a serious and lasting impact, we needed to have the world of science on our side, to do education through schools and major awareness campaigns, and finally to promote common rules to deal with the assaults the sea suffers. So many successes, so many defeats and so many future plans. We will never stop, always counting on a domino effect that will change the course of a civilization that is leading our species, and not only, to the sixth mass extinction,” the president concludes.-photo Marevivo press office -(ITALPRESS).
