Last week we travelled to Taranto for the second consortium meeting of MARMOT, an Erasmus+ project supporting communities affected by pollution and human rights violations. The gathering brought project partners together to advance our joint work on an educational platform for independent monitoring, while learning from the experience of local residents and activists.
Spending time in Taranto gave us the opportunity to connect the development of educational resources with the everyday realities they are intended to address: living near industrial facilities, seeking reliable information about pollution, and collecting evidence to demand greater protection for health and the environment.
Supporting communities through accessible knowledge
MARMOT — Monitoring and Acting for Human Rights, Environment, and Social Impact — is a three-year project funded by the European Union through Erasmus+. It brings together universities, civil society organisations, legal experts, training providers and digital developers to make monitoring tools and knowledge more accessible to communities.
The project is developing an educational platform combining environmental monitoring, social and human rights impact assessment, and conflict management. Its resources will help people collect reliable data, interpret findings, document impacts and use evidence in dialogue with institutions and companies. The platform will be developed with input from its intended users and tested in pilot contexts across Europe, with feedback informing the final resources.
Source International leads the work on identifying community needs and selecting relevant learning materials, drawing on our experience supporting communities through scientific investigations. We also coordinate the project’s pilot activities. Listening to the people who will use these resources is essential to understanding which tools are useful, what support is needed, and which barriers can prevent people from putting knowledge into practice.
Why Taranto
Taranto is MARMOT’s Italian pilot site. For decades, industrial activities associated with the former ILVA steelworks have affected the city’s air, soil and marine environment, raising serious concerns about public health and residents’ rights. The proximity of the plant to residential neighbourhoods, particularly Tamburi, makes the relationship between industrial production and everyday life especially visible.
The city also has a long history of community-led investigations and civic action. Residents and associations have commissioned independent analyses, documented contamination and worked to make environmental information accessible. In 2008, for example, PeaceLink activists arranged laboratory testing of locally produced cacioricotta cheese, revealing dioxin contamination. Community-backed analyses also helped expose contamination in mussels from the Mar Piccolo. These experiences show how people directly affected by pollution can contribute to building the evidence needed to bring environmental concerns into public debate.
For MARMOT, this experience offers valuable lessons about the practical work behind independent monitoring: finding expertise, paying for analyses, interpreting results and communicating findings.
Learning from the territory
Alongside the consortium sessions, we visited the Tamburi neighbourhood, the Masseria Carmine and the old town, and met local activists who shared their knowledge of Taranto and its history. Seeing these places and hearing the experiences of those who have worked for years to document pollution added an essential perspective to our work.
As MARMOT develops, these exchanges will help us keep the resources grounded in the circumstances communities face. Accessible educational materials need to recognise existing local knowledge and help people build on it, connecting scientific methods with their questions and priorities.
We thank RadioVera, Luciano Manna and the local activists from Giustizia for Taranto and other associations who welcomed us, accompanied us through the territory and generously shared their time and experience.
Learn more about MARMOT and Source International’s role in the project.
