Environmental monitoring in Salento

The long work of the Mobius Circle APS – Precious Plastic Salento association concluded yesterday, which used the Monithon method for its first work of civic monitoring of public projects. A work that began last year thanks to the European project Civic Monitoring for the future of Europe , for which Monithon provided a specialized training course on the civic monitoring of European funds.

The monitoring report – the first of a series in various European countries, which we will publish in the coming weeks – deals with the renovation of an ancient rainwater collection channel in the naturalistic oasis of the Canale della Lacrima (financed with the Funds for POR FESR 2014-2020) in the municipality of Campi Salentina. The intervention also involves the strengthening of the surrounding riparian vegetation, in order to reconstitute a woodland nucleus, starting from some very rare specimens of Virgilian oaks found on site.

The monitoring process lasted about a year and was developed with data collection and analysis activities, starting from the information available on the  Open Coesione website in the resolutions published on the website of the Municipality of Campi Salentina. Public debates, working groups, inspections, and interviews which also involved a group of students, active protagonists of the monitoring activities, completed the activities.

The outcome of the research highlighted that it is a useful project which, however, could have been developed in a more complete way, especially since a management plan for the area was not foreseen.