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Welcome to the 3° meeting  with Sailor for Sustainability! You can read who they are here!

This time I want to share the adventures and solutions Ivar and Floris discovered in Italy. I made this choice for 2 reasons: they just left Italy towards a different country and they celebrated 1 year of adventures this year.

Ivar and Floris Italian experience started in May 2017 in Portofino among strange pieces floating in the sea, traffic checks, protective areas, a bit of rain and too much water on the boat they stayed for a while discovering the area and having interesting meetings with local organisations.

Slow Food  a global organization headquartered in Italy. Slow Food demands natural means to grow crops, so working conditions are healthy and the environment is protected. And it promotes local, artisanal and diverse food, which is prepared with knowledge and embedded in the local culture. In other words, they promote “Ecogastronomy”. They visited the Slow Food International office in Bra and learn more about it’s activities.

The zero wind situation allowed the to meet Alessandra from the education centre, “Outdoor Portofino”. Their aim is to educate as many people as possible about the beauty and vulnerability of marine life. They do so by organizing hiking, kayaking, snorkelling and sailing expeditions. /outdoorportofino.com/index.php/en/

The following stop is in Le Grazie, a nice town in the Cinque Terre area where they hiked and relaxed.

After the first month in Italy it was time to move and when the right wind arrived our favorite sailors started took their way to Elba, Corsica, then Sardinia where Porto Liscia is a suitable place for their anniversary celebrations. I am very happy to share some reflections made by Ivar and Floris:

“In twelve countries we visited twenty sustainable solutions, far more than we expected. Inspiring people enthusiastically showed us how they are working towards a more sustainable future, at the same time motivating us to continue what we are doing.

We also realise that since our departure, sustainable change has become more urgent. We’ve seen alarming news on climate disruption, as evidenced by extreme temperature records, increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations and Antarctic ice-sheets breaking. A report was published on the ocean plastic nightmare, predicting that by 2050 there might be more plastic than fish in the oceans, and we read about the demise of the Great Barrier Reef, a unique and important ecosystem.

It’s easy to get depressed, but we want to focus on the many positive examples we have found (click to read some example).

sailors for sustainability - Elba Island-beachTime in Sardinia included diving in La Maddelena National Park and acknowledge the use of Sardex. Stimulating the local economy is a fundamental theme in Sardinia.

Why should businesses on Sardinia suffer from a lack of money caused by a crisis that started on Wall Street, five guys from the small Sardinian town of Serramanna wondered. They founded Sardex, a commercial credit system for small and medium sized Sardinian businesses.

Sardex is a purely digital currency, there are no coins or bank notes. We set limits to how much negative or positive Sardex any account can have, depending on the size of the member company. The sum of all accounts always equals zero. Sardex is therefore just a means of exchange that stimulates transactions in the local economy.”

The obvious sustainability benefit is an increase in local services and production activity that requires less transport and stimulates employment on the island. But how does it work in combination with the euro?  We’ll reflect on these issues in more detail in a separate item about sustainable economy.

The path to Neptunes Cave

The discovery of Sardinia includes Stintino, a town once famous for tuna fishing serves as our base to explore the island of Asinara. Until 30 years ago it was a high-security prison and before that a colony for people with contagious diseases, today it’s a national park.

The meetings of our favorites Sailors never stop. They met Bernice Notenboom just returned from a North Pole expedition to measure the state of the ice, and raise awareness for the urgent need for sustainable change because of climate disruption.  As soon as they met fascinating stories about polar expeditions and outdoor adventures on Belize follow each other, interrupted only by discussions about the dire state of the climate and the many sustainable solutions that we think exist.

The Mistral wind is a typical Mediterranean wind that originates in the French Rhone valley and can stretch all the way to Sardinia and beyond.
This great condition allowed  Ivar and Floris to depart towards Tharros in the Golfo di Oristano and then to the Isola di San Pietro in the south west corner of Sardinia. The Mistral persists, so they decide to skip Cagliari and cross over to Sicily in one go.

Sailors for Sustainability: Italian adventure 2017 to be continued..

Are you interested to know more?
Ask  #STouW by Sara Vitali about: 

#sustainabletourism consultancy, 
#socialmedia strategies for tourism sector & linked sustainable, responsible, green or eco businesses; 
#sustainabledevelopment through tourism. 
http://sustainabletourismworld.com/sara-vitali-stw-founder/