One Ocean Educational Tour: Alex Bellini visits Italian universities

OOF ambassador Alex Bellini’s educational tour of some Italy’s leading universities in Italy has concluded with a conference at the Bocconi University of Milan. Some of the legs took place thanks to the support of Audi.

The outcome has been positive: 770 students were involved in the cycle of meetings and were made aware of the state of emergency facing the seas and oceans of the world. The circuit of conferences kicked off at LUMSA University in Rome on 21 October and continued with legs at the Universities of Florence, Bologna and Pavia, H-Farm in Treviso and the Bocconi University in Milan. The H-Farm innovation platform is home to the rowing boat the explorer used to navigate the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and on which he is traveling the 10 most polluted rivers in the world, responsible for more than 90% of the plastic waste that is gripping our oceans in a lethal vice.

The tour, organized by One Ocean Foundation, raised awareness among young people of how the well-being of the ocean concerns us all. There were numerous references to the ongoing pandemic and the need to radically change our behavior. Alex’s conferences were accompanied by talks from representatives of the Foundation such as the oceanographer, Sandro Carniel, a member of the Scientific Committee, and the Secretary General, Jan Pachner, who stressed that “sustainability must become part of our culture and become an integral part of our daily habits and the way we see things”, highlighting why the One Ocean Foundation focuses on young people, in the hope that they can offer a truly more sustainable future.

At the end of each leg, the universities signed the Charta Smeralda, the code of ethics that identifies concrete and immediate areas of intervention for the protection of the sea. In doing so they undertook to respect it and to adopt its principles, as well as promoting them to students and alumni.