(by Alberto Azario, President of Green Holding spa) Following the many and extensive fires that took place in these years, and especially in these weeks, all over the Italian territory, Monday 2 July "finally passed the decree law Land of fires". The new Minister for the Environment Sergio Costa announces this through a direct Facebook. The main novelty of this decree is the transition from the Ministry of Agriculture to the Environment of the competence on the reclamation of illegal landfills, the hydrogeological protection and the circular economy for, according to the words of the minister, "give the opportunity to start a path for the whole national territory ".
What has entered the collective imagination as the Land of Fires, the "Earth Mala", a bad land between the provinces of Caserta and Naples, famous for the millions of tons of toxic waste illegally disposed of and buried in its territory, was one of the most great environmental disasters in the history of our country. Permitted nomad camps on heaps of garbage, columns of black smoke, illegal illegal landfills open like huge chasms, sick children, men and women forced to live with the poison every day; this land victim of the billionaire business that has linked the entrepreneurship of the North to the Camorra and to the politics of Campania has always marked the life of many Italians who were born in that land and want to continue living there today. The latest report by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità of January 2016 gives us an idea of how complicated the situation is: in the Terra dei Fuochi area the incidence of tumors in men is higher than 11% and in women of 9 % compared to the national average. The "Terra Mala" is today a land tormented by visible and invisible pollution, which is often a death sentence, but it is also the story of those who have stubbornly chosen not to abandon that territory. Institutions and laws today have a specific duty, to act to allow us to reclaim those territories and give hope to those who decided to live in those lands in spite of everything. And it is no coincidence that the presentation of the Decree-law took place, as well as on social media, in the eleventh edition of the Festival of Civil Commitment at Casa Don Diana (victim of Camorra in 1994) as part of Don Diana day, place natural for the presentation of a provision that arises from the denunciation and resistance of the people of Campania who has never stopped denouncing the traffic of waste and asking for the initiation of reclamation long promises, but not yet started. Territories that first sensed that the environmental problem is national and certainly not circumscribed to individual provinces or regions. In fact, we need to look at the Land of fires with particular attention, also and above all because this phenomenon from the Campania region is being exported quickly in the rest of Italy, especially in the North, as recent data from the Commission of Inquiry on Eco-mafia testify.
There are certainly too many fires that have occurred in the last three years in waste storage sites throughout Italy. The intention of the Government is now to consider these places as sensitive sites, i.e. sites that can enter the coordinated control plan of the territory, managed by each prefecture with the help of all the police forces, for a surplus of preventive control, in such a way that it is possible to “have a further preventive guarantee for the citizen and for the entrepreneur who may suffer any damage”. In addition to the interventions on the so-called Terra dei Fuochi, the responsibilities on hydrogeological instability and the related funds on the protection of the territory also pass to the Ministry of the Environment. From the Government it seems that there are such money, especially EU funds that can be used for the presentation of credible projects: priority is given to orphan landfills, or those in which the polluter has not been identified. In the folds of the budget, the ministry would have already recovered the first 300 million euros made available for the Terra dei Fuochi in Campania, with the aim of starting with technical measures and studies to arrive at definitive and permanent safety, in summary these areas will no longer be able to pollute or release poisons. Furthermore, during the presentation of the Decree, Minister Costa did not mince words: “I ask that the 20 law on eco-crimes be serviced. I ask the environmental Daspo: those who have polluted go away from our lands. I also ask that some environmental crimes (for example illegal waste management and unorganized waste trafficking), which today are contraventional crimes, become crimes, with a more substantial afflictive measure. And I ask a third thing: that the confiscation system applied to the mafia is also applied to the eco-mafia, who for me are not only those who are associated with a clan, but are those who have polluted our lands ”.
It is worth pointing out that the decree "refers to all the lands of the fires that cross the country, not only those of Campania, but all those that may emerge or already exist". The decree "Terre dei fuochi" will extend the tools used in Campania to all areas characterized by underground waste, pollution of the subsoil and groundwater and toxic bonfires. Furthermore, for the first time we have spoken about the circular economy within our legislation and this will also be the responsibility of the Ministry for the Environment. A new economic system that allows us to imagine "a new system of doing environmental business, giving entrepreneurs the guarantee to be able to proceed well and to the citizen the guarantee that what is a healthy product, that the packaging will be seen with a different look, that the product will be re-used, that the second raw materials can be a resource "will therefore be more possible in the future. However, it will be necessary to properly remove the bureaucratic obstacles present and facilitate the birth of a new economic paradigm.