July. For our third week in Pollica, we were joined by our co-designers: students, fishermen, marine biologists, environmental foundation leaders, local and regional government officials, and UN FAO representatives at the Paideia Campus for the Climate Shapers Save the Ocean Bootcamp and the Bluera Summit. Together, imagining a new story about the endemic seagrass Posidonia, a critical foundational ecosystem under threat, that has strong links to the Mediterranean Diet and the traditions of slow living for which Cilento is deeply proud.
We went fishing for alici (anchovies) and spoke with the fishermen about the changes they are seeing. Today's fishing efforts cover operational costs but hardly any profit. We envisioned a partnership between local fishermen and Bluera students to monitor and protect the region's meadows, and find a role for the upcoming generation of mariners.
We built (with a head start) a real working monitoring dashboard that visualises all the open source data from ISPRA and ESA surveys of the region, and overlays citizen science data. We built a decision simulator and an economic simulator for future-casting different choices to manage Posidonia over the coming decades, and the long-term potential gains or losses. We presented all this as it was created to the Mayor.
We created a student-led five-minute film, in Italian and English, on why Posidonia matters, presented on stage to government officials during the same week. We sketched out a campaign to build pride and demand for Posidonia, tied into existing festivals and new museum construction plans. We created campaign slogans and stickers (by hand, not AI).
- One life for Posidonia, or no life by 2100
- Proteggimi e ti proteggerò
- Il profumo delle vitalità • l'oliva di mare
