A "Framework Agreement" on environmental protection is the one signed this morning between the Italian Army and the Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA). A five-year collaboration based on monitoring, surveillance, protection and control of environmental and natural resources within the training and operational needs of the Armed Forces.
"To sign the agreement with the Italian Army and in particular with those actors that operate on the territory - has declared the prof. Bernardo De Bernardinis, president of ISPRA - is for an institution like ours extremely important. The need is to build a relationship, a confrontation and a common sharing of reading and of tools having as a common focus environmental problems ".
The signing of the document represents a further step towards a specific attention to the environment by the Army, which although it has specialized technical bodies for chemical-physical monitoring, in order to implement the prevention and verification activities carried out on the national territory and abroad, has identified the collaboration with ISPRA as an opportunity to strengthen its skills in environmental protection.
"Maintaining and enhancing, achieving results by improving the well-being of this country and of future generations: these are the reasons that lead us to collaborate with ISPRA - said the general manager Giovan Battista Borrini, head of SME - giving them our potential techniques, in a framework of synergy between state institutions. Protected natural sites are born on military sites. We need to train ourselves, but we do it with the utmost respect for the environment, keeping the areas we employ under control and introducing new systems capable of minimizing the need for fire drills ".
One of the first activities covered by the Agreement will be the environmental monitoring of marine areas facing military training areas, often located in places of particular naturalistic value. In many cases, at European level and in Italy, it was the military presence that guaranteed the conservation of habitats, thanks to the surveillance of the areas, the limitation and control of accesses and the exclusion of other anthropic and criminal activities such as illegal construction and poaching.
