Abstract
The ‘Land of Fires’ indicates an area in Campania, in the south of Italy, where, systematically, since the end of the 1980s, toxic wastes have been illegally burned and buried. Organized mafia-like crime plays a significant role in the illegal management of waste in this area; however, organized mafia-like criminals are not the only players. Although in the public opinion the mafia clans are the most important subjects involved in the illegal waste business, a significant role is also played in this field by many businessmen, firms, and bureaucrats. Corruption is a crucial element that connects all these actors in the waste sector, characterized by the grant of public licenses and authorizations. All these conditions hamper the competition and facilitate the creation and the development of oligopolistic forces, where the strength of mafia intimidation turns out to be particularly effective. The weak enforcement power at both national and regional levels has been used to explain this widespread illegal situation, but responsibilities actually lie at various governance levels, spanning from inefficient bureaucracy to political patronage and criminal malfeasance. Moreover, the lack of adequate (and effectively enforced) waste management policies has created institutional and regulatory uncertainty, which has fostered the illegal market of waste. On these premises, the case study shows the role that local associations and organizations have played in the land of fires becoming a reference point for the victims of those waste-related environmental crimes. The findings obtained throughout the development of an affiliation network analysis allow us to say that victims are strengthening their relationships with local associations in the network and are starting to reinforce their sociopolitical and judicial actions. The increasing level of victims’ organizational activities in the land of fires from 2008 up to now is, in fact, creating public awareness on the impacts of illegally disposing and burning of waste, thus shedding light on the capacity of civil society to influence policy changes and decision makers at national level.
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Notes
- 1.
Nunzio Perrella, a member of the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia, recently declared during an interview with a journalist that the illegal waste business was already thriving before the Camorra started to participate in it. See Perella (2016). Perrella is renowned among magistrates, journalists, and Italian citizens for the phrase he said in 1997 during a volunteer declaration to a prosecutor: ‘Garbage is gold.’
- 2.
Vagliasindi et al. (2015).
- 3.
According to the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on Waste Cycle and Connected Illicit Activities, every year almost 30 per cent of national special waste is illegally disposed of (Commissione d’Inchiesta 2000, p. 7). Campanian businesses produce only a small amount of the national special waste; most of the waste illegally disposed of in Italy is produced by enterprises located in other regions of Italy.
- 4.
The Campania region generates a small amount of special waste as compared to the rest of Italy, not only in absolute terms but also relative to its contribution to the national GDP. For example, in 2009, the production of special waste in Italy was about 134 million tons, of which more than 10 million tons were hazardous (7.5 per cent of the total production). Campania produced slightly more than 6.4 million tons, of which 0.35 million were hazardous (5.8 per cent of the regional production; ISPRA 2012). This means that Campania contributes only 4.7 per cent of the total special waste in Italy and only 3.5 per cent of the national production of hazardous waste, even if the contribution to the national GDP is 6.25 per cent (http://sitis.istat.it/sitis/html). In fact, D’Alisa et al. (2012) recommended complementing the conventional waste indicators with two different indicators in order to investigate these critical waste management patterns.
- 5.
The map is available at http://www.laterradeifuochi.it/, date accessed 21 December 2015.
- 6.
- 7.
D’Alisa and Armiero (2011) and Armiero and D’Alisa (2012) demonstrated the high level of unreliability surrounding the data on urban waste management in Campania. The state of emergency was declared officially because the landfills were full, but there are no consistent data on the available landfills’ capacities, nor for 1997 when there were 82 landfills in the region nor for 2007 when there were 9.
- 8.
The decree issued in 1997, known as the Ronchi Decree, is named after the minister of environment at the time. It introduced the principle of ‘self-sufficiency’, which implies that each region should be responsible for the management, and thus disposal, of the urban waste generated in its own territory. The Ronchi Decree implemented not only waste production prevention policies but also waste collection, recycling, and incineration procedures. Moreover, the decree made provisions for limitations on waste disposal to prevent health and environmental contamination risks and made illegal waste disposal a criminal offence. In particular, Title VI/bis divided crimes against the environment into four categories: environmental pollution, alteration of the natural patrimony, damage to cultural patrimony, and illegal trafficking of waste and environmental fraud.
- 9.
In Italy, the Council of Ministers declared a state emergency in accordance with Article 2 of Law 225/1992, which specifies that civil protection intervention is necessary when natural disasters and catastrophes occur, or any other events that, due to their intensity and extent, require extraordinary means and powers. There are cases when full powers are not delegated to the Head of the Civil Protection Department but to a special commissioner. Such was the case in 1994 when, for the first time, the Committee for the Waste Emergency in Campania was nominated. The declaration of the state of emergency guaranteed the commissioner power to bypass laws and procedures due to the urgent need to deal with the lack of a waste management plan and the diminishing availability of landfill capacity in the region.
- 10.
Senior and Mazza (2004) were among the first to investigate the link between the high level of cancer mortality in an area in the province of Naples and the level of pollution caused by illegal waste disposal—an area that the two scientists came to call the ‘triangle of death’.
- 11.
Not all individuals exert an equal amount of influence over others. In this sense, opinion leaders are influential in spreading either positive or negative information about a particular issue. Rogers (1962) emphasized the role of opinion leaders in influencing late adopters during the evaluation stage of the innovation decision process.
- 12.
The interviewees were free to suggest different organizations from those listed.
- 13.
A decisive point at which a significant change or historical event occurs.
- 14.
In the information exchange network, activists can participate in the initiatives of some organizations even if they are not members of it or even if their activist organization co-organizes demonstrations, seminars, conferences, and so on, with another organization. During these activities, activists belonging to different organizations exchange information about environmental and waste issues. These settings of mutual interactions are very relevant for the circulation of information among activists.
- 15.
The knowledge networks denote a loose interaction between activists and organizations. Such interaction does not mean that knowledge relevant to mobilization cannot emerge out of these organizations that are also central to the information network and membership network. Activists may acquire studies, research results, epidemiological studies, dossiers, and documents even from organizations that they do not trust on a political level or with which they do not interact directly. For example, activists can use the waste management plan drafted by the regional government even if they do not trust the regional authorities (politicians, technicians, and so on) who govern the region or they can read epidemiological reports by the World Health Organization, even though they have no opportunity to meet and debate with the researchers who conducted the study.
- 16.
Indeed, ‘in affiliation network data, the two modes are the actors and the events. In such data, the events are defined not on pairs of actors but on subsets of actors’ (Wasserman & Faust 1994, p. 30). Specifically, the first mode is the set of agents N, the second mode is the set of events M; an agent can be related to one or more events.
- 17.
We report here the results of only 21 of the 32 interviews conducted.
- 18.
To put it simply, there are activists who associate the increasing rate of mortality and morbidity through cancer and other diseases with the presence of illegal waste sites, and there are government officers who correlate the increasing rate of disease to the poor lifestyle of Campania’s citizens.
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Germani, A.R., D’Alisa, G., Falcone, P.M., Morone, P. (2016). Victims in the ‘Land of Fires’: Illegal Waste Disposal in the Campania Region, Italy. In: Sollund, R., Stefes, C., Germani, A. (eds) Fighting Environmental Crime in Europe and Beyond. Palgrave Studies in Green Criminology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95085-0_3
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