Giovanna Melandri

Interview

• "Italian politics and new communication technologies" (Naples, Telecom Conference, 04/07/97)

Biography

Born in New York, 28 January 1962, Giovanna Melandri graduated in Economics and Commerce, with a thesis on Reagan's fiscal reform of 1981. From 1983 to 1987 she worked in the research office of Montedison, co-ordinating a working group on industrial policy and technology. From 1988 to 1994 she was responsible for the International Office of the Environmental League, where she co-ordinated the scientific committee. She contributed to the drafting of the employment plan and the fiscal reform proposal of the environmental group Legambiente.

She was a member of the Italian delegation to the Bergen Conference on sustainable development in 1990, summoned by the then Prime Minister of Norway, Bruntland, and in 1992 of the Italian delegation to the UN Conference in Rio de Janeiro on Environment and Development in 1992, during which she followed the preparatory work for the approval of the convention on climate and the biodiversity convention. Since 1982 she has been a member of the Directive of the Legambiente and since 1989 a member of the national secretariat.

She has been a member of the national Directorate of the PDS (Democratic Party of the Left) since 1991 and a member of the party's executive committee, with responsibility for the communications policy sector, since June 1996. In March 1994 she was elected for the first time to the Camera of Deputies as a candidate for the progressives in Rome, and was re-elected in the election of 21 April 1996. In the XII legislature she was a member of the executive committee of the Progressisti - federativo group and was responsible for the working group on bioethics (following the progress of the laws on transplants and artificial fertilisation).

She has been a member of the Foreign Affairs Commission, the special Commission on Children and President of the Human Rights Committee. In the XIII legislature she is a member, for the Democratic Left group - the Ulivo, of the Culture Commission and the Parliamentary Commission on RAI. Having responsibility for the communications policy sector of the PDS, her principal responsibility in the XIII legislature has been the definition of the new regulations for the broadcasting system and for the liberalization of the telecommunication sector, the reform of the laws on publishing and the Journalists Association and rewriting legislation in the sectors of the theatre, the cinema and music.

She has intervened on the Internet and the role of politics in relation to the Internet (http://www.pds.it/ForumD&R/Melandr.htm ). During the XII legislature, she was one of the promoters of the law against sexual violence and during the XIII legislature she has presented draft laws in the areas of adoption, bioethics, assisted fertilisation, and preventing extradition to countries which practise the death penalty. She also presented a proposal to modify the penal code in examinations of comparisons of genetic identity.

Since 1995 she has been President of Madre Provetta, an association which fights against the uncontrolled application of medically assisted reproduction techniques, and which runs the telephone information service for the public,"Telefono Cicogna".

Bibliography

Publications:

• From 1989 to 1994 she edited "Ambiente Italia", an annual report on the state of the environment in Italy, produced by the experts of the Legambiente.
• From 1989 to 1993 she edited a series of books on the environment for the publishing house Franco Angeli.
• From 1986 to 1991 she edited the Italian version of World Watch Magazine, the bi-monthly from the World Watch Institute of Lester Brown. During this period she was a also a member of the editorial board of Tomorrow, an international environmental monthly, and of the executive committee of the magazine, La Nuova Ecologia.