Speech by the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, at EXPO MILANO 2015

"Feeding the planet" is the epochal challenge facing humanity. To feed means to finally guarantee the right to food and water to all the inhabitants of the Earth. But it also means giving back to the Earth, and therefore also to our children and to future generations, that energy of life that we borrow from it on a daily basis and that we must stop depleting, with the risk of destroying it, as we have unfortunately done during the past decades.

Also for this reason Milan's Universal Exposition is the best place in which to celebrate this year's World Environment Day, promoted by the United Nations.

There is an ever-closer link between healthy, safe and sufficient food and the protection of the environment, with its delicate but immensely vital equilibriums. The "Seven Billion Dreams" to share in a single planet - opportunely suggested by thousands of citizens, especially the young, as the theme of this World Environment Day - represent the new frontier of social progress and economic development.

Today sustainability is the very prerequisite of peace, no less than justice, cooperation between peoples and the respect of fundamental human rights.

It is appropriate to speak of "dreams", as long as they are dreamt open-eyed. At stake are our responsibilities, individual and collective.

We cannot and do not intend to give in to the inertia of impersonal superstructures that determine the over-exploitation of natural resources beyond their capacity to regenerate, that enhance disequilibria and inequalities, that create divisions within societies, between territories and peoples.

We must answer the question of whether humanity is still capable of positively forging its own destiny. Because, at this point in history, providing everyone with food and water and assuring the future of the environment can no longer be taken for granted.

It requires intelligence, social cohesion and cultural commitment.
It requires innovative ideas and advanced technologies.
It requires for the young to play a leading role.

And it requires strong decisions, also because regulating powers often prevail even over national governments.

The Milan Expo is an opportunity; it is a challenge for everyone. First of all for our Country, which has put its hospitality and its organisational capacity at the service of a great project. And we count on dialogue being constructively contagious.

The universality of the themes proposed by the Expo was well summarised in the Milan Charter, which constitutes not only a good synthesis of the juxtaposition of experts, civil society and institutions, but is also intended to be the tangible legacy of this event in view of important upcoming international events: the Addis Ababa Conference on Financing for Development in July; the UN Sustainable Development Summit in September; the Paris Climate Conference in December.

The United Nations Secretary-General used an effective expression in defining 2015 "a year for seed sowing".

We are proud that our Exposition forms part of this seed-sowing. And we want it to produce important fruits, for all to benefit from. The Milan Charter has a great ethical and political value. It indicates crucial objectives, calls for radical change, launches proposals to governments and international organisations and outlines commitments for citizens.

We hope many will sign it.

Under the thrust of the Millennium Goals outlined in the UN 2000 Millennium Declaration, the rate of malnutrition has significantly dropped. Targeted development policies have reduced extreme poverty in absolute terms. Nonetheless, 800 million people still suffer from chronic hunger; 160 million children are undernourished and are consequently afflicted by stunted growth; two billion human beings do not dispose of sufficient safe food while, by contrast, an equal number of the Earth's inhabitants is overweight or obese.

We have a lot to do together. The Milan Charter solemnly sets out the right to food and water as fundamental rights, the indicators of a more general right to life.

Food is an important cultural heritage. The way in which we farm the land, and obtain, distribute and consume our food defines our life in common and even designs the landscape. The goal of definitively eliminating hunger and malnutrition in the world imposes a leap forward in political relations, social organisation and industrial and agricultural production.

Our ambition is that Expo help us make this leap. We want to raise the "Zero Hunger" generation. And we know that educational and cultural commitments need big ideals.

Without the motivation of big ideals, without sharing, we will fail meeting our goals of combating poverty, mitigating climate change and protecting the life-enriching biodiversity that feeds new vital energy into the planet.

Consuming responsibly and affirming the right to food concern the policies of Nations but not only. The challenge starts from us citizens.

We have the faculty to choose, and therefore to reward, goods produced in a way that is respectful of workers' rights and of the environment. As consumers we can play an active role in conditioning the market and not only be conditioned by it. Thus the Citizens Pact is further enriched.

Of course, rights entail duties. Among our duties there is the duty to reduce waste. It is intolerable that over one billion tons of food are wasted along the food consumption chain. It is possible to plan for unsold products, approaching their expiry date, to be distributed amongst the needy and low-income earners. Waste is an insult to society, to the common good and to the economy of any Country. Several solidarity projects are obtaining positive results. It is necessary to extend them, analysing how to intervene with instruments providing them with legal support.

Waste reduction is a great public commitment that can be joined by the major players of organised civil society, volunteer workers, non-profit organisations, cooperatives and private enterprises.

The culture of waste and unlimited consumption is no longer compatible with a feasible future or with economic development. This is the novelty of our time. Exiting our recent crisis means knowing how to innovate and change direction.

The Milan Expo was designed for this crossroads.

The economy of the future will be more circular. We will need to increase the effectiveness of production processes, doing more with less, promoting re-use, reducing waste, environmental impact and greenhouse gases, and increasing the share of renewable energy sources.

This perspective is far from being a resigned acceptance of declining growth. On the contrary, this is the challenge that is already changing markets; a challenge for industry, society and science. Green economy is already an important factor of Italy's and Europe's GDP, and will become even more important in the future. European quality standards are called upon to measure up to this competition, because it will be decisive in re-launching the Continent's social model and in making an important contribution to the whole world in this recently initiated century.

The Milan Expo is proof that Italy wants to show its upside in this initiative: its intelligence, its organisational capacity and its beauty.

We are the Country in the world with the largest number of UNESCO "human heritage" sites. A total of 50 sites, more than in any other Country in the world.

To these we can add the Mediterranean Diet, an intangible cultural heritage that UNESCO has wanted to acknowledge, including it in the Cultural Heritage list.

It is a nutritional model of excellence, because of its effects on health and on the environment, but above all because it is an essential element of our lifestyle and our historic heritage.

It is our responsibility to defend and promote it, enrichening it through innovation, and to safeguard our biodiversity in order to assure it stronger protection on a global scale.

This not only means limiting manufacturing. A new broad field of action is opening up to industry. And the challenge also concerns agriculture.

Agriculture has been considered for years an old and rear-guard sector. Today it partakes in the signs of economic recovery and figures show that a growing number of young people are running farms. Agriculture is and must increasingly become the sector of innovation and eco-innovation. Our quality depends on it. Our common good is essentially founded on the agro-food production chain.

Starting from water. Much more water is consumed in agriculture than for human use. The FAO emphasises that single individuals need two litres of water a day while a thousand more are necessary to assure food for a single person.

Today approximately 750 million people do not have access to drinking water. It is an intolerable figure.
Unless we are capable of modifying agricultural productions by opting for lower water-using crops in Italy as well as in other Countries; unless we are capable of changing habits and consumption practices, especially in industrial Countries; unless we are capable of correcting storage and distribution mechanisms, in ten years' time, more than half of the world's population will risk experiencing serious water stress.

Today, still more than in the past, the fight against poverty is a condition for the security of Humankind and of the Earth.

It is the new name for Peace.
Poverty generates famine, which fuels hatred and war, which desertifies societies and territories.

Water and food cannot be thought of as strategic resources to be fed into bilateral controversies and international forums.

On the contrary, just like the territories producing them, they testify to the indivisibility of human destiny.

Peace is possible. It is in our hands. What we cannot do is think that peace can be imposed through weapons, oppression, exclusion and waste products. We have seen historic proof of this and we continue to see it on a daily basis.
Wars, terror, ideological and religious extremism, famine and natural disasters push hundreds of thousands of people into migration flows of unprecedented dimensions. We must face them with wisdom and humanity, welcoming those who flee, rescuing those who cry for help, fighting those who make a profit out of despair, clamping down on shameful trafficking. But we must put our stakes especially on cooperation, on the balanced development of other Countries, on narrowing the stark inequalities that are now making the world unstable.

Food and water for all, sustainable development, biodiversity and moving beyond the economy of waste are more than just a moral duty. They are a test of our intelligence. If we are incapable to look beyond the short-term, we will rob our children of their future. The Milan Expo was developed looking at the future, contributing to design it with courage and innovation.

Almost ten years have elapsed since Milan presented its candidacy to host the Universal Exposition.

The candidacy arose from the long-term bipartisan agreement between the then Mayor of Milan, Letizia Moratti, and former Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi. That bipartisan initiative, which gave prevalence to sentiments of cohesion and solidarity, has been turned into a great success.

Today's Expo is the result of everybody's teamwork, it is an important showcase for the whole Country precisely because it is an expression of Italy as an economic system.

We must recover, in a confrontation that is often fiery, the sense of the common good. And we must also keep in mind that it is founded on legality and transparency. The fight against corruption must be uncompromising, and uphold the law and liberty that corruption deprives us all of.

The Milan Expo will continue to convey its message on the wavelength of innovation and of the common good.

I would like to express my thanks to all the exhibitors who accepted the challenge, to the Countries that participated with creativity and spirit of solidarity, and to all the visitors who will echo its ideas and proposals.

Because, citing Albina Faria de Assis Pereira Africano, thanks to the contribution of so many, the Milan Expo is writing a page of history for Humankind.