Industrial Disasters: The Italian Case.

The present essay focuses on the environmental crisis of Italy. For decades Italy has witnessed a systematic erosion of its territory and a pollution process stemming by a substantially unregulated industrial presence, and housing-related speculative processes. The chapter addresses three issues: epidemiological rates, social effects of the environmental issue, and the resistance processes to speculative land-uses. The author suggests that epidemiological investigations’ result are clear: environment-related diseases are one of the most important causes of mortality in the country. Notwithstanding that, no serious policy has been undertaken, and the Italian agenda does not seem so concerned with environment. As a consequence, Italian courts tried to compensate the lack of a political leadership on these matters. However these attempts failed in producing sought effects, as this kind of issues are not likely to be solved by means of judicial decision. Environment is too strictly intertwined with development and economy, and the solution to problems must be, in primis, political. The lesson that should be drawn, then, is that Italy needs to reprioritize its urgencies, and that this should be done urgently.