Keywords

1 Introduction

The theory of welfare economy, since its very beginning, has always promoted reflection on the growth and development models. The quantitative importance of development has been predominant until the second half of the last century, which brought minor considerations of issues such as environmental equilibrium and equity, and intra- and inter-generational and sustainability strategy. The principles of sustainable development have been remarked upon through several stages and, thanks to that, it is currently a widespread heritage among the most important international institutions. It is worth mentioning some of them: Hirschman in 1958, Rachel Carson in 1962 (Carson 1962), the Club of Rome in 1971, United Nations in 1972, the WCED in 1987, the First World Summit on Sustainable Development in 1992 with the Agenda 21 proposal (United Nation 1992), the Millennium Goals in 2000, the WSSD of Johannesburg in 2002 (UN 2003), the promotion of the Decade of Sustainable Development by UNESCO (2005–2014) (UNESCO 2005), UNESCO World Conference on Sustainable Development in Bonn (UNESCO 2009), G8 University Summit in Turin (May 2009), UNGASS Resolution for Rio+20 (UNGASS 2009), and Zero Draft Rio+20 (UNCSD 2012). Beside these general stages, together with the Bonn Declaration, other deliberations such as University Conferences have also occurred. The most important are: Talloires Declaration (1990), Halifax Declaration (1991), Earth Summit Agreements (UNCED 1992), Swansea Declaration (1993), Kyoto Declaration (1993), Copernicus Charter (1993), and Student Declaration for a Sustainable Future (United Nation 1995). Numerous scientists, researchers and universities from all over the world have contributed to the evolution of the principles, issues, and methods for the evaluation of Sustainable Development. Perugia University is located in Umbria, a region in central Italy. Its historical traditions concerning natural resources management are retrievable in several famous ancient historical and literary works such as “Bucoliche” by Virgilio, “RerumNatura” by Plinio il Vecchio, and “Canticodelle Creature” by S. Francesco. The socio-economical context has always been strongly related to the territorial development processes and to the valorization of natural resources. Umbria was also a leading region during World War II’s most important industrialization period, with its conservation of land peculiarities and rural agricultural reality. In 1955 this context was analyzed in a noteworthy study by Henry Desplanques, “Campagne Umbre” (Desplanques 2006, Reprint); it is a significant piece of research, with a penetrating interpretative capacity, concerning the sui generis value of the regional area, whose sustainable management is deeply rooted in the awareness of economical subjects and policy makers. It is not a case that this region is known worldwide as “the Green Heart of Italy and Europe”. Perugia University joined with a gradual and magisterial activity the context described above: its main concern is in fact the affirmation of the principles of Sustainable Development Strategy by means of research, didactics and extension. The Perugia University Department of Agricultural Economics, Farm Appraisal and Food Sciences—DSEEA—since the end of 1960 showed its long tradition of directing crucial research and teaching methods to reach an innovative model of development. After the publication at the Club of Rome in 1972 of The Limits of Development (Meadows et al. 1972), there has been an extensive analysis of the central role of proper land management, leading to Earth conquest or re-conquest. The publication of the famous Brundtland Commission Report “Our Common Future” in 1987 was followed by an intensive sequence of conferences and seminars on the contents and targets of the already organized Sustainable Development Strategy; its success derived from the positive activities gradually introduced by the Department in order to acquire a new role within the issues of integrated rural development and sustainable initiatives, in both domestic and international levels. Since 1987, an intense network of relationships was established with fellow researchers and teachers from more than 30 countries—Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, Asia and the Mediterranean Basin. In 1994 the Department obtained the funds to run one of the earliest ALFA-Latin America Academic training projects, financed by the EU, named GEASUD-Gestion des Entreprise Agricole et Soutenabilitè du Development in which eight universities were involved (five Latin American and three European), co-ordinated from Perugia. At the same time, because of development of the training demand, the sustainable development led to the opening of the Bologna Processes, which were activated in both degrees: the first on Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the second focused on Sustainable Rural Development. One of them is a first level degree (3 years), while the other is a second level degree (3 + 2 years). In 1996, 2 years later, Perugia University promoted a Ph.D. on Sustainable Rural Development, Environment and Territory attended by Italian and foreign students. This activity increased the visibility and the organizational skills of DSEEA, which, in September 2000, also organized in Perugia the 1st World Forum of Agro-Tourism and Rural Tourism, with the participation of experts and entrepreneurs of more than 65 nationalities. On that occasion, the International Association of Experts in Rural Tourism and Agro-tourism (IAERT) was also founded and was considered to be an international reference point on those specific topics for several years. Especially after the Johannesburg WSSD in 2002, research was dedicated to both young researchers and older academic staff, as long as they focused on the same subjects of the present work during the 1990s. Close attention was paid to the issues related to the sustainable development indicators, the Environmental Impact Assessment, the Strategic Environmental Assessment and Support Tools, strictly analysed using multi-criteria. In 2010 the spin-off Centro Ambiente Rafforzamento Economico-Strengthening Economic Environment Centre (CARE) was created, which operated positively, especially in extension services. Recently, in September 2011, the DSEEA promoted an International Summer School—SIS entitled “Sustainable Management and Promotion of the Territory”—SMPT (www.gpst-smpt.com) in collaboration with Todi’s Agricultural Technical Institute “A. Ciuffelli”, the Alumni Association, and the Local Municipality. The scope of the choice of the Degree, Masters Degree and Ph.D. courses is to form young technicians and researchers, and provide them with the knowledge background necessary to develop a future perspective regarding the regional niche markets of food farming production, handcraft, fashion, and renewable energy, even in a period of international crisis, thanks to the input given by the internal critical set of skills belonging to the experts in local sustainable development. The International Summer School was born with the aim of stimulating the mechanisms of benchmarking the University’s activities, with the objectives of both keeping the didactics profile high, and proposing a repeatable and transferable model to help foreign students realize projects and processes of sustainable development in their own areas. On the other hand, one of the aims is to provide local youth (operators, researches, technicians, teachers, policy makers) with continuing attention and operative emulation in transferring their own skills for the consolidation of sustainable development (Leal Filho 2011).

2 The Vision of Perugia University to Promote Sustainable Development Strategy

The future of the world, as they say, is the basic theme of the forthcoming Rio+20 Summit, based on the affirmation of a program firmly focusing on integrated and sustainable development. The aim of the above-mentioned program is to publicise the need for an integrated amount of support for new synergies, beyond the monothematic approach (often required in developmental processes and actions) because this innovative yielding approach gives more effective and efficient results. With integration, we intend to achieve a model which could help improve the real sectors of economic growth of each sensitive area of the world, by emphasizing the maximum opportunity for increasing the value of these realities. Thanks to their typical specificity, they may—if properly guided—turn their elements of weakness into points of strength, for use in their social-economic modernization process. A more endogenous rather than exogenous development, a bottom-up rather than top-down approach, should characterize this course of action in the scientific and technological innovation fields which it has to support too. Sustainable development means are not to be considered as only linked to utopian matters, but rather, by preserving the environment, they can lead to a perspective of fairness intra-and inter-generationally developed through at least the following five key factors: economic (income adjustment), social (adaptation of the quality of life), environment (productive conservation and sustainable use of natural resources), cultural (management of cultural diversity), and management (sustainability management).

The formation of the human capital, research development and technological innovation are essential, and they are the two options to be considered. This must be done while avoiding the risk of introducing those mechanisms which lead to a breaking point with past and present structures, and also with social values hierarchy, still prevalent in harsh transitions occurring in many countries around the world. We must aim for a smooth introduction of innovations which does not produce any negative impact on the values of hierarchy and social and economic organization in all the areas in which we operate. In the present work we believe the improved professional formation of human capital should facilitate the acquisition of the required social factors, particularly within the weakest areas, using a special flexible ability which is suitable for the creation of increasingly self-rooted new value shifts, which can be—introduced when a company engages in the process of modernization with fairness and sustainability.

3 Sustainable Development: Output of Political Strategy Toward the Culture of All People and Nations

Activity is stimulated within society’s catalyst areas where it has been particularly identified that young people require the provision of projects aimed at making them reach out for higher education (as far as possible) and helping them join the working world. The result would be acceleration in the educational process, so as to overcome crises, such as the current phase of the development model involving a billion people who live below the minimum level of nutrition; this 20 % of the world’s population has just 1.4 % of the global wealth.

In this context, all projects of international cooperation, including mutual consultation, become operative in a coherent, comprehensive, frequent, clear and penetrating atmosphere, with an appropriate relationship with the media. The factors mentioned above serve to enable the gradual establishment and positioning of the elements which science links together in peace and solidarity through the use of technological innovations, increasing friendly use and general accessibility. All initiatives should follow the guidelines of an ambitious program, aimed at reaching the establishment of a “common house” supplying scientific global-scale research, involving in its wide planning all the potential which each socio-economic state can bring: the areas of education, science and technology, together with the “spearhead” of the action needed to support a sustainable development culture.

The action is characterized by progressive work to build a successful scientific framework, based on the above-mentioned values and aiming at a more concrete awareness and knowledge of new generations—a scientific society within which the University may be the starting point of a New Renaissance, a process related to each country and the whole of World Society.

What the multitude of young people living today needs are concrete signs of hope and freedom, which lead to a more sustainable life and livelihood, and can overcome the current systematic way of working, which dominates our modern “easy times” as a prison in order to obtain a happier and sweeter society.

In this sense, science must facilitate the removal of barriers which often imprison and overshadow the ancestral values of ancient societies, not to be approached as if they belong to a museum, but rather with a spirit of revival and rediscovery: a kind of science that awards property but also humanity.

The growth of university research centers acts as windows of consciousness, exploiting their spirit of analysis and the skills brought by all the autonomous self-decision-making people of world society.

4 The A.M.A.R. Project

The partnerships, in particular the town of Todi, the Veralli-Cortesi Institute, and the ETAB-La Consolazione Charity Organization, are still supplying different kinds of assistance. They work, as usual, with intense interest and wide availability.

The Summer School is part of a more extended project called Associazione Mondialedi Amiciziadelle Aree Rurali (A.M.A.R.) (World Friendship Association of Rural Areas) which we want to set up in Todi during 2014, when the State Technical Agricultural College “A. Ciuffelli” 150th Anniversary Since its Foundation is celebrated. The first step of the AMAR Project was the drawing up of the Todi’s Charter, which then became a Final Document of the Summer School activities. The project intends to build up the AMAR association as a possible international entity, with the will and duty of looking after Rural Areas’ Sustainable Development all over the world (see Fig. 1). Many of the most remarkable current “voices” (such as that of Bill Gates)—each within his own field of activity—already declared a few years ago their agreement with the AMAR aims. The same project, if well guided in the development of sustainable management and promotion, can represent the main base to support the eradication of poverty to achieve a fairer and happier life throughout the world.

Fig. 1
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A possible logo of A.M.A.R.—(World Friendship Association of Rural Areas Project)

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The establishment and activation of the International Summer School on Sustainable Management and Promotion of Territory—SMPT

An International Summer School was create in 2011 within the framework of the A.M.A.R. Project as an item with the objective of solving the different management requirements of the Perugia University area and the Umbria Region, which could be repeatable in and transferable to many areas of the World (Ciani 2012).

The Umbria Region, a naturalistically rich area, is subject to frequent phenomena of hydrogeological instability, and also to fire hazards in summertime because of the large number of woods.

In order to limit these risks, the trend is to promote prevention through learning of GPS and GIS use. The aim is to improve a management method able to safeguard—through constant monitoring—the development, the good quality of life, and the protection of environmental resources, especially landscape and biodiversity.

There is the will to start and consolidate a mechanism which can make “the country talk” by use of the new ICT. For example, the contextual use of websites, webcams, e-commerce, etc. can turn the local firm (handcraft, agricultural, and services) into a globalized entity which is detectable and reachable by any potential client from any place in the world. This procedure leads to a loyalty effect with a high surplus value, since it is linked to the “face” of every operator, and to the image of specificity of the country. This is the direction of the processes of growth and innovation, aimed at safeguarding an internal sustainable development which is repeatable and transferable. From these two attributes it is possible to originate additional opportunities. On the one hand, the opportunity of strengthening the sustainable development culture for the needs of the regional reality where Perugia University and SIS operate; on the other, through the involvement of foreign students, the opportunity to promote SIS with a cognitive system of training and learning.

The experience and demand from local and foreign people increase the level of the formative activity’s value. The various experiences are compared, they act as a fertilizer and an accelerator, and they enrich the cognitive system. The SIS, linked to the State Agricultural Technical Institute and to Perugia University, plays the role of advanced factory, which the operators, educators, and single citizens emulate for the concretization of the sustainability strategy beyond any boundary.

In light of the already mentioned “tradi-ovation activity” and the Territory’s Sustainable Management and Promotion, it is conceived as a professional training and demand component, supplying the best skills for the technicians who work in the area: agronomists, architects, engineers, surveyors, and land surveyors. During the workshop week, full immersion activity’ projects are carried out, involving enhancement and intervention on some subjects, within Todi’s district: the Castles of Monte Nero and the village of Petroro, the Widespread Hotel in Massa Martana’s territory, and the Arboreal Archaeology Company. All this was achieved in a 2-day visiting tour. Within this framework, the Summer School was attended by young people from 16 countries (see Fig. 2) attending very high-level academic lessons and training, with the participation of University teachers from Bern, Budapest CMBS, Iasi (Romania), Chiba (Tokyo) Siena, Tuscia in Viterbo, and Perugia.

Fig. 2
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Group of participants at the educational excursion in Assisi surroundings

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5 The Charter of TODI

Following the careful preparation of the SIS on its educational contents and the training within the territory, an extensive discussion during the final session of Edition I of SIS, GPST-SMPT was held, the majority of the group sharing the same basic ideas.

5.1 An Operational Implementation of the Strategy of Sustainable Development and Fight Against Poverty in the World

The participants of the International Summer School—SIS—SMPT agreed that it is necessary to face the global crisis which involves manufacturing, financial, social and moral aspects. It is a continuous process which goes on beyond the options of sustainable development, the green economy, and the third industrial revolution, in order to give tangibility to the two guidelines of the next World Summit on Sustainable Development (United Nation and WSSD—Rio+20 2012) about operational implementation of the Sustainable Development Strategy to fight against World poverty and to create conditions for a future of prosperity which are the main guidelines for the final document of the same Rio+20 “The Future We Want” (United Nation and WSSD—Rio+20 2012).

5.2 Essential “NEW RENAISSANCE”

We must take into account that the territory in its widest and most holistic form, together with Man with his capacity to analyse, choose and operate together with the “humanity” which distinguishes him from all other living creatures, should be brought back to the centre of strategies used by any development model, by using a concrete, operational parameter to create the basic conditions for a strong “NEW RENAISSANCE”.

5.3 Emphasize and Reach the TRADI-OVATION

It has been assumed that the nature of Todi’s town was declared as the most sustainable in the world by the Kentucky University Professor Richard S. Levine. This could be the possible national and international benchmark to strengthen and improve the effective action of guardianship, enhancing and promoting any rural area in the world. The members of the core group decided to draw up this charter, and agreed to promote this initiative in their home countries and those of foreign partners. They also undertook to establish a Local Action Group—LAC, which helps to spread this mission all over the world.

The Charter indicated with the keyword “TRADI-OVATION” (for short) the acronym of “Territory, Rural Areas, through Development, Innovation, Organization, Valorization, friendly user, Technology, ICT sharing, Online Networking”; this is the main component with which this innovative process can be structured to give effective credibility, and to erase the increasing disillusion that usually follows major international meetings: it is necessary to turn the words to practical action, towards the foundation of the new model of territories management and promotion. The TRADI-OVATION acronym and the words it represents are a pervasive and concrete way to give the younger generation a learning motivation and interest in the Sustainable Management of Territory.

5.4 A Society Able to Think but Particularly to Act

The initiative aims to create not a narrow, local concept, but rather a wide-ranging, international vision which can be used not only to do business “selling knowledge”, but also simultaneously to bring the local system in Umbria to the centre of worldwide attention as an example of excellence in modern, territorial, local government. The issue of territorial governance and the promotion of integrated and sustainable land use is currently at the centre of international debate, particularly in view of the World Summit in Rio de Janeiro from 4th to 6th June 2012, better known as Rio+20 on the Strategy for Sustainable Development. The initiative focuses on strategies for the protection, conservation and enhancement of the different areas around the world, the relationship between urban and rural areas, the challenge of renewable energy, green economy, and the eradication of poverty. Therefore, these objectives and issues need to be put into practice in local, national and international contexts with professionals who, from the perspective of “think globally, act locally”, have the distinctly modernized know-how and the “ability to act” which match up to the ongoing revolution, known as the third industrial revolution. Above all, they are aware of the strategic prospects of saving the planet through good practice in the processes of the Strategy of Sustainable Development, at the Centre of which lies the serious global problem of famine and the current phenomena of serious regional food shortages (950 million people live with a daily food calorie level well below minimum standards, 2 billion live on less than a dollar per day).

5.5 The Friendly Use of Innovation Communication Technology

The SIS intends to corroborate firmly their conviction that actions of territorial programming and planning must be strongly supported by an appropriate and widespread use of advanced instrumentation of Information and Communication Technology—ICT, of which GIS, GPS, DSS, (decision support systems, geomatics, geographic information systems, remote sensing and monitoring) and broadband Internet should be key elements of the “user friendly” store of knowledge of the modern agronomists and agricultural experts registered in their respective professional associations, all for the sake of the innovative continuity of the guiding principles of the Declaration of Cork and the G8 in Treviso–Cison di Valmarino 2009.

5.6 The Quadrangle of Words of the TODI Charter

The Charter invites everyone to take into account the fact that the Charter of TODI and the town’s initials: T.O.D.I. are emblematic and of great significance in capturing attention, according to the logic shown by the words quadrangle in Table 1.

Table 1 The meaning of the TODI “quadrangle of words”
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The last part of the document concerns the aspiration that the national and international Summer School training activities on “The Sustainable Management and Promotion of the Territory” become the basic tools for the implementation of Todi’s Charter principle itself. The Charter of Todi, through the original representation of the quadrangle of words, (shown below), is an intriguing frame of references for the Operational Sustainable Development Strategy. This aspect could be analyzed in the future World Friendship Association of Rural Areas—AMAR to obtain innovative and integrated sustainable territory development everywhere.

6 Conclusions

The Green Campus—2013 of Pondicherry University was intended, as one of its main target, to make learning easier for young people and to implement concrete measure to diffuse the culture and the modern governance of Sustainable Development. I would like to stress that the case of the DSI-GPST-SMPT in TODI and the Todi Charter is a possible positive study case to achieve this aim.

The planning of the AMAR Project, the activation of the International Summer School on Sustainable Management and Promotion of Territory, and the drafting of the Charter of TODI all showed that international and local levels of response were significant.

This is a way to support the assertion of the Strategy of Sustainable Development, even though probably weak in terms of Cartesian analysis and predictive power, but with a strong will to promote the culture of territory sustainability. In times of deep global crisis and lack of economic governance models, we can suppose that is sufficient to go out and start working, using proper management and promotion of the territory as a great vital resource. A series of mechanisms could enhance wealth and healthy production, so as to start defeating the impairing strength of the globalized international speculator lobbies.

DSEEA promoted its initiative for the diffusion of the principles of the sustainable development culture. After a publication about the role of the Earth during the 1970s, DSEEA studied the research, didactics, and extension of the development of the issues, and the gradual but inexorable affirmation of the new model of industrial development earlier and in recent years. The promotion of specific Masters Courses and a Ph.D. in Sustainable Rural Development, Environment and Territory from 1996 allowed DSEEA and Perugia University to play a leading role in the professional formation of graduate students and technicians of Public Administrations who deal with the management of environmental and territorial problems of the Umbria region. This region is of great interest from the environmental, productive, historical, and cultural points of view, and it needs a preventative approach towards geological instabilities and fire hazards, but also an innovative effort to valorize and promote the natural resources which represent the basis of the production and wealth for the whole region.

The promotion of sustainable development culture during the last few years undertaken by CARE (Environment Center and Economical Improvement) is intended to activate a consistent and concrete action of extension, in step with the country’s needs, especially for the Evaluation of Environmental Impact and Environmental Strategic Evaluation.

The foundation of the AMAR Project (World Friendship Association of Rural Areas) represents the choice of deep internationalization, solidarity, and international cooperation for the creation of a future world society which is more sustainable, fairer, and happier.

The main idea is to create the conditions to give sustainable continuity to formative action related to the region’s future, and to export the formative model of development throughout the entire world.

One of the future perspectives is to improve the formative issues, specifically with local and international cases of study.

The elaboration and analysis (first of all, the Charter of TODI, which has the logo of “tradi-ovation”) by SIS are gradually transferred through seminars and conferences in the formative local institutes. The Charter of TODI has been shared by famous national experts, and is gradually brought into the schools and Public Administrations. It is already present in the formative obligatory issues of the Agricultural Technical Institute, which is a partner of the project. The following step forms a competition in the Technical Institute of the town, with a scholarship for the best essays on the Charter. An additional project is its integration in all the schools of the region. Two municipalities have already approved it as an operative strategy for their government’s program. The second edition produced in 2012 and its conclusion were presented at an International Conference of Territory, Sustainable Development, and Renewable Energy. The executive staff of SIS accepted from the town of Todi the proposal to prepare the Project of Park T.U.De.R. [acronym and also old name of Todi City (Urban Territory and Rural Area Park)]. At present, the preparation phase for an appropriate operative General Agreement between the University and Todi’s Municipality is proceeding.

The pillar of the proposal for a learning circuit associated with sustainable development is based on an adaptive and visionary testing method. It is not possible to achieve happiness (which is considered lawfully indispensible in most countries’ constitutions, and one of the most important targets of the next RIO+20) without big dreams to imagine and to reach.

For all these reasons, we have suggested to the colleagues of Pondicherry University that we establish a Regional SIS-GPS-SMPT. We can do, we must do!