Global Policy Forum

By Giorgio Caniglia

The battle for the reduction of heavy goods vehicles (HGV) in the Mt. Blanc Tunnel

In the International Year of the Mountain, the Italian and French governments intend to pursue a policy of dangerous and suicidal transportation: the people killed in the tunnel of Mt. Blanc on March 23, 1999, in the Tauri Tunnel (Austria) and at Gottardo (Switzerland) in 2001 were not enough to initiate the conversion of transportation from tires to tracks for even a kilogram of goods transported across the Alpine massif. Beyond the aforementioned misfortunes, the transport of goods by HGV's pollutes and degrades an alpine environment that is being preserved for reasons of nature, culture, and the human resources it represents. For many years initiatives have been assumed by local populations, as well as public entities, organisations, parties, and movements, to save and protect their economy based on the agriculture, tourism, and artisan-ship; not to mention fundamental resources such as water. In recent times there have even been international demonstrations: that of 6 October 2001, which the provisional director of ATTAC Italy supported - to Maurienne and that of 4 January 2002 at Courmayeur. One is now being organised to take place in Courmayeur this coming March 23rd, the 3rd anniversary of the tragedy in the Tunnel. On this occasion, the need to protect Mt. Blanc and the Alpine massif, considered by everyone to be of invaluable value and patrimony for all humanity, will be made very clear.

These initiatives are strongly symbolic: winning at Mt. Blanc means winning across the Alpine massif and making it clear that policies of national and European transportation must change radically; until the transit of goods across the Alpine massif transforms entirely from tires to tracks. It is necessary to block the politics of de-localisation, and make those who transport on tires pay for the real costs of pollution, degradation, and endangerment of populations' health.

The current debate on the re-opening of the Mt Blanc Tunnel must be seen as a conflict on a public trans-border good: the Mt. Blanc massif and its territories. A conflict on the dispatch of this good, or rather who should not decide it, and on the basis of what criteria. The populations of the Mt Blanc, supported by local and global civil society, are trying to oppose the operations of companies dispatching through the Tunnel and the connected road network (The Valdostane Road Association, controlled by the multinational Benetton), flanked on their part by state institutions (the French and Italian government) and transnationals (the EU). Our role, as ATTAC, in this battle can, naturally, only be of one kind: the full support of every public campaign that has as an objective a radical transformation of the current policies of transport in Europe and throughout the world.

One of the dogmas of the process of neoliberal globalisation is the free circulation of goods, due to the present world-wide division of labour. Goods, ever more frequently, are produced in countries of the Global South, where labour is less expensive and workers rights' are not respected. That which is produced in the south must, however, be transported to the North to be sold; and therefore creates important environmental and social problems.

As a final point in this debate concerning the demands of transportation, we wish to underline that this subject cannot be affronted merely on a local level. Not only for reasons of solidarity with other populations of the Alpine massif, but because we are dealing with a complex problem that finds its roots in the global. At the base of this problem lie, in fact, our models of production and consumption, oriented towards an always-increasingly irrational productivity and consumption.

For these motives, we support policies of either: a combined transportation based on tires and tracks, with the objective to soon reach a re-equilibrium of goods transportation in favour of tracks; or a re-evaluation of regional economic trade and promotion of short circuits of distribution. In particular we support the proposal to introduce, as in the Swiss example, a redevance on the traffic of heavy goods vehicles linked to the prestation. This consists of charging heavy vehicles a toll on every crossed road based on their weight and volume of emissions, and kilometres crossed. The proceeds of this tax should be allocated, as in Switzerland, to the restoration and modernisation of train infrastructures, and compensation, at least in part, to populations and territories suffering from the traversing of HGV's.

As one can see, the objective is not only to criticise the current system of transport, but to commence discourse on the international organisation of production and consumption of goods. Without a sensible reduction in the amount of transported goods, even the most innovative plan of transport would end up as merely a temporary solution.

30% of merchandise transported across Alpine roads is food and other agricultural products. The very HGV involved in the Mt Blanc Tunnel tragedy was carrying margarine and flour from Belgium to Italy. It's time to say 'enough' to a system that encourages transporting, over thousands of kilometres, goods that could be produced in every region of Europe.

Today, working against the return of HGV's in the Mt Blanc Tunnel means working for a diverse system of transport-and therefore also of production-of goods world-wide. The battle for the reduction of heavy traffic in the Mt Blanc Tunnel will be our grain of sand in the mega-machine of neoliberal globalisation.

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