The Milan Expo is not and could never be a routine event. It entails great responsibility: the task that we have undertaken must be performed with utmost care.
Italy's whole economic system must be aware of the opportunity offered by the Universal Exposition 2015 to measure itself against its capacity to develop ideas and implement them.
We must not overlook the challenge of putting in place complex infrastructural and logistic systems that make up valuable hubs of innovation capable of driving the Country on the road towards development.
Our heritage of concepts, projects, creative design and manual skills is called into play.
Italy's infrastructures, often qualitatively not in line and sufficiently interconnected with international systems, can only result strengthened by this dose of vitality.
The central theme chosen, "Feeding the Planet; Energy for Life", represents one of the essential challenges for the survival of the human race.
It represents a fruitful opportunity to redefine the available options in matters such as land and its use, water, the ecological balance, research, international relations and trade. These are all issues on which Italy is called to contribute to defining more appropriate policies, both at Community and multilateral level, especially the FAO and the WTO, and also at the opportune bilateral levels.
It is a task that has and continues to engage a large portion of the Country in these crucial weeks. This two-day event, which is part of the process to get people acquainted with the Expo, confirms the large amount of resources, first and foremost intellectual, deployed to this end.
The whole of Italy that is looking at Expo 2015. The last days of preparation (and this occurs in every universal exposition) are always the most feverish: a race to finish off pavilions and finalise the proposals that each Country and every organisation will want to offer to the public, both qualified and curious.
The Expo can be compared to a large convoy storming onto the national and global scene to disseminate messages and contents that we wish to be positive.
Italy's industriousness.
Innovativeness and competitiveness.
A cohesive institutional, political and entrepreneurial system.
The full expression of the energies present in our society, capable of networking around a multidisciplinary project.
The capacity of the Public Administration to fight off, with diligence and transparency, any possible contamination and corruption.
The evidence that what is needed are not generic exhortations but rather the obstinate and persevering deployment of the resources offered by the Italian society.
Listening to the reasons of international players on matters as sensitive as food and nutrition.
Focusing on the reasons of all the stakeholders involved: from the native populations of wetlands, to the people of the drought-stricken areas of the Sahel; from the role of landless peasant movements to the innovations made available by big multinationals and to the activities of research centres.
The right to food linked to the use of renewable and sustainable resources.
A respectful harmony between communities with different levels of development and in the dealings between producers and consumers.
"Energy for Life" spells out the theme of Expo 2015: it immediately implies the notion of waste (squander, as Pope Francis defined it).
The issue is far from being marginal in this debate.
It is the contradiction between the diseconomies and the inequalities that exist in the wealthier societies, capable of provoking the contrasting phenomena of undernourishment and malnutrition and the scourge of hunger that afflicts a multitude of children, women and men.
Eating (healthily) in order to live. It is difficult not to see this as one of the most complex facets of the right to live.
Therefore everyone, from single individuals to international institutions, and from production and consumption behaviours up to international conventions, must focus their attention on this issue.
The objective role of Expo is to effectively transmit culture and promote education.
The reflection process that developed inside the laboratory that was put in place during the preparation to the event is a great opportunity, capable of developing, in full agreement with the international organisations dedicated to this purpose, new intentions and ideas more in line with a world of equals. The dialogue has rightly involved all the stakeholders; the challenge is global.
The issues now open are the implementation of production, consumption, logistics and distribution systems, the relationship between research and agriculture, the workings of markets, environmental sustainability and the relationships with local communities, healthy life styles and nutrition education. These same issues were addressed by former Prime Minister Prodi in his speech.
In the modern world's growing instability as well as in the unrest underlying our societies, the principal sparks of tension precisely lie in themes like the availability of food and energy resources.
Economic, environmental and political factors are combining to give life to a sort of perfect storm, with potentially devastating effects, of which we can already perceive some worrying signs.
The rights of people, yesterday food and today water and energy, can spark conflicts. Therefore harmonising positions on these points contributes to peace.
Four key words create this harmony: beauty, know-how, innovation and spawning grounds.
The primary lesson should be learnt from Italy's agricultural landscape.
The beauty of Nature and Man's centuries-long labour have turned our Country's agricultural landscape into something unique, striking a stable balance between agricultural activities and environmental protection. The beautiful landscapes of other countries offer examples of equal beauty.
By contrast, the cynical and futureless exploitation of particular areas presents a dramatic situation: I am especially thinking of the Terra dei Fuochi, the emblem of environmental degradation.
The context in which Expo 2015 is being held is undoubtedly unique and constitutes an element of Italy's appeal, which contextualises its unmatched artistic heritage into the landscape, both rural and urban. The pride of Italy in offering all this, together with its culinary culture, is expressed at very high levels and represents a style of life that is expressly cultural, timeless, a feature of appeal of primary importance in attracting a flow of visitors to our Country.
The driving force behind all this is know-how, as I just recalled, refers to the networking of knowledge and the entrepreneurial, research and application skills of the different production chains representing the wealth of Italian talents. All this is compounded to the taste for innovation.
The image that is often given of Italy is that of a Country with excellent engravers. In other words, we are called upon to finish off other people's work and perfect it. This is not true.
The culture that has taken root in Italy over many centuries is not only this, especially in the field of art, because Italy has also stood out for its courage to create discontinuity and therefore inventions, developing new projects from scratch, researching beyond the confines of the known, with examples of great interest also here in Florence, as recalled by Mayor Nardella.
And the courage to create discontinuity brings us to not shy away from making radical innovations, considered to be necessary in order to look at the future through new criteria, with no regret for experiences that have become obsolete.
The goal we legitimately aspire to is to compound all the conditions and experiences drawn from the Expo and use them as an international model for good practices. After the close of the event, the way of using areas, infrastructures, knowledge and professional expertise may also prove to be of great use. And we will have to prepare for this moment with an equal amount intelligence and effort.
The spawning ground - the fourth key term - is an integral part of all this; a fruitful experience that disseminates throughout the social fabric its beneficial effects, which will persist in the future.
This is what makes the challenge so important.
If the result is positive, as everything seems to indicate, it will go to the advantage of Italy's social capital, a collective asset, which will turn out to be enriched not only in terms of infrastructures but, more importantly, by the creation of knowledge.