Advancing Sustainable Transition and Resilience in post-mining Areas Erasmus Project

Project Title

Advancing Sustainable Transition and Resilience in post-mining Areas

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Partnerships for Creativity

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Rural development and urbanisation; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

ASTRA aims to engineer an upskilling educational model tailored towards a multiple and trans-generational target of:

BENEFICIARIES
1. young adults (18-29 year olds), whose active participation to the labour market has always been strategic to the upkeeping of local, regional, national and continental economic livelihood, and that is increasingly more so, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and of the on-going 2020 Covid-related crisis.
2. the model will be directed to those mature adults (30-65 year olds) willing to reposition themselves more competitively within the working arena in individual, sector and geographic terms.
3. seniors (aged 65 and over) will be co-opted to maximise the impact of what effectively aspires to throw the seeds of a grassroots conversion and revitalisation.

LOCATIONS
The process aims to unleash the untapped high cultural and natural potentials in a sample of brown-field communities lying in the extreme NUT2 outskirt regions of the EU’s Southern and Eastern peripheries: Sicily (Italy), Andalusia (Spain), Silesia (Poland).

DETERMINANTS
1. CULTURAL:
A) The dominant cluster-and-dissolve model purpoted by the World Bank that has gone unchallenged until the late 1990s has led to massive out-migration of human resources from former mining areas to service-industry urban conglomerations, regardless of any compensative measure being taken at the point of origin of the migratory flows;
B) Systematic lack of government and private support in little-funded, demographically declining communities has made economic transition hard to design – let alone implement – in industrial, economic, cultural as well educational terms.

2. EDUCATIONAL:
A) A mismatch between the predominantly technical secondary education on offer locally and their former quasi-exclusive employment destination emerged as soon as the mining and extractive activities were disbanded. This decades-long unresolved gap has led the educational-working demand-offer supply chain to short-circuit and, consequently, echoes in:
B) spiralling early school drop out rates and fewer graduates, as a consequence of a wide-spread negative sentiment across the young and mature adults age segments (15-64 year olds) and at all geographical scales, to the point that the region the proponent organisation belongs to (formerly home to as much as 92% of global production) performs significantly lower than the EU average in terms of rate of graduates/total population at NUT0, NUT1, NUT2 levels (EU average 39.9%; Italy 26.9%; Sicily 17.8%).

3. ECONOMIC: A third of young adult jobs were lost across Mediterranean European economies (Spain, Italy, Greece) after the 2007-8 crisis and prior to 2020 Covid-19 crisis striking. While NUTS3 sub-regional unemployment figures have yet to be released by national institutes of statistics and Eurostat, in all likelihood the above contractions of the workforce will add to those caused by unmitigated closures in post-mining communities. That is why, in order to preserve the well-being of brown-field areas, a revitalisation/conversive approach – starting from adult education actions – is essentially and undelayable.

COSTS
1. ECONOMIC: if unmitigated, NEET figures will add to negative demographics, low natality, emigration, long life expectancy in making ever more inactive citizens throw a greater burden on an ever smaller share of actives. Up to 1 in 5 peak-age workers will be lost by 2030 and dependency will rise from 38% to 70% by 2050 (Istat 2019).

2. SOCIETAL: Inactivity leads to decaying well-being and keeps youths from reaching adulthood markers. Mediterranean NEETs are aware of these costs and are also more afraid of
getting to 45 without a job (25.5% of Italian, 10.7% of German youth). Despair leads to apathy which leads to sheltering in gaming and social networking putting them at risk of digital, alcohol or substance addiction/abuse.

SOLUTIONS
1. Harness the speed of development, where advanced Knowledge Intensive Systems (digital) and non-cognitive skills (creativity and entrepreneurship) demand adaptation by all age groups via upward skilling routes;
2. Capsize labour policies from apprenticeships to start-up mentoring;
3. Foster community resilience by transitioning from one-industry-driven local economic systems to diversified ones, cuch as the one underlying the tourism sector and relates services;
4. Base the entire conversion cycle upon economic and environmental sustainability .

SELECT REFERENCES
Conlin M V et al (2011) What Happens When Mining Leaves. A Global Synthesis, London;
Mendes I (2013) Mining Rehabilitation Planning, Mining Heritage Tourism, Benefits and Contingent Valuation, SOCIUS Working Papers, Issue 3, Lisbon;
Simpson A (2019) Former Coal Mining TownsTurn to Tourism, Pew Charitable Trusts; Philadelphia
D’Urso G – Modica (2019) Resilience and Sectoral Composition Change of Italian Inner Areas in Response to the Great Recession, Sustainability 11, 2679-2693

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 297891,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

IDRISI CULTURA E SVILUPPO & Country: IT

Project Partners

• INTERNET WEB SOLUTIONS SL
• Fundacja Ad Meritum