«"Welcome and welcome to Sardinia, the land of the electric landscape".

This risks being the slogan with which we will welcome groups in the next tourist seasons, at least as long as the next seasons exist, given that over time no one will spend their savings on holidays without scenery anymore".

Thus begins the open letter signed by 60 naturalistic companies and environmental guides on the island, who contest the attack on renewable energy production plants underway on the island.

Here is the full document:

«We are guides and tourist companies in the nature and sports sector, some young and others less so, frightened by the policies that are transforming the landscape of Sardinia and which will cause the crisis in the sector. Our work and earnings depend on a particular tourist category, on people interested in Sardinia for its beauty

nature. So to speak, we rent landscapes, with a positive economic impact on the area, given that we eat, sleep, visit monuments and museums, and travel with local carriers.

Among us there are those who started in the early 2000s, working for more than twenty years to make Sardinia a nature tourism destination of European importance, with territorial promotion, collaboration with local authorities, networking, investments in capital goods, deseasonalization... Everything could end, because no one likes walking or cycling among wind turbines, doing yoga among photovoltaic panels or taking photos on a horizon pierced by a forest of enormous poles, visible for kilometers.

Most of us have never received a euro of public contribution, we have built a new economy in Sardinia only with our own strength and our savings, because the Region, despite all its contradictions, seemed to be marching in the same direction: Cycling Network of Sardinia, new parks such as those of Gùturu Mannu and Tepilora, Sardinia Hiking Network, tenders for the construction of bridle paths, International Active Tourism Exchange, conferences, professional training courses for hiking and cycling guides...

Twenty years of work that they want us to throw in the garbage, to transform Sardinia into a large power plant serving other regions, without even bothering to offer us jobs for male and female workers, as at least they deigned to do in the past in the mining, petrochemical and tourism sectors. Instead of moving forward, they want to make us go back to the nineteenth century, with the destruction of the territory without any compensation: to them our wood to build their railways, to us our territory desertified by their enterprises.

Certainly we need to make the energy transition, but this is only part of the broader ecological transition, which for us is daily bread, given that for example sustainable mobility, by bicycle and on foot, is our very job. Ecological transition also and above all means social sustainability, starting with the European directives for the involvement of communities in decision-making processes and the principles of proximity and proportionality : energy is produced where it is needed and the quantity needed is produced. Moreover, the European measures to support agriculture and natural habitats in Sardinia would not be explained if we then wanted to convert everything to electric monoculture

destined for export, without any benefit for the local population, destroyed in its ties with the territory, as in the worst colonial traditions.

We physically work in nature every day, we know it much more and much better than those who simply cite it in their statements produced with copy and paste. We know nature's suffering and we suffer the consequences of its suffering, not only in our personal lives but also in our work, therefore we have always been in favor of the energy transition, even when it was not fashionable in ministries and departments. This is why we know well how to do it: with participatory processes and community networks. It is necessary to finance and create community networks first of all, until at least one exists for each town in Sardinia. Afterwards, perhaps, if they are not enough, we can think of some power plants, but always respecting the participatory process.

In conclusion, we do not take lessons on energy and ecological transition from the political class. The right and the left have shown that they cannot give it to us, rather they should do the job for which they are handsomely paid: to reconcile the different social and economic interests, so that the development of one does not come at the expense of another. Respecting the principles that the European political class itself has established, without distorting them in concrete application as the Italian and Sardinian political class is doing.

Once again we are proactive and proactive, ready and ready to do our part: they will find us in the streets and in the countryside, to work and to support our people who defend Sardinia from the onslaught of speculators".

(Unioneonline)

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