{"id":134262,"date":"2024-07-16T11:19:12","date_gmt":"2024-07-16T09:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/?p=134262"},"modified":"2024-07-18T19:53:42","modified_gmt":"2024-07-18T17:53:42","slug":"waste-crime-in-italy-the-challenge-of-environmental-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/134262-waste-crime-in-italy-the-challenge-of-environmental-justice.html","title":{"rendered":"Waste crime in Italy: the challenge of environmental justice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Considered as one of the sources of income for organised crime, along with drugs, weapons and human trafficking, transnational environmental crimes are rarely brought to justice. Within the European Union, the case of Italy highlights the challenge to prosecute environmental criminals. Could transitional justice could step in and offer solutions ?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

On March 20, 2024, the Italian president Sergio Mattarella paid a tribute to the RAI journalist Ilaria Alpi and her cameraman Miran Hrovatin on the 30th<\/sup> anniversary of their murders<\/a> in Mogadishu, Somalia, as they were working on a report into weapons and waste trafficking. \u201cThe killers and those who ordered the murders are still nameless and faceless after investigations, moves to knock the probes off track, retractions and trials ended in nothing,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is a wound for the whole of society. The institutions know that we can never give up on the search for the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thirty years ago, on March 20, 1994, Alpi, 32, and Hrovatin, 44, were ambushed and shot in their jeep in the Somali capital by a seven-man commando. Initially, it was thought that the reporters were murdered after clashes which had broken out between the militias of Somalia 's warlords and Italian peacekeepers. But a 1999 book by Alpi 's parents called \u201c<\/a><\/a>L 'esecuzione\u201d (\u201c<\/em>The Execution\u201d) alleged that they were killed to stop them from revealing what they knew about an international arms and toxic-waste ring implicating high-level political, military and economic figures both in Italy and in Somalia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waste crimes. Environmental crimes<\/a>. They are transnational. They are costly. Their number is rapidly growing. And they are often linked to corporations or to organized crime. \u201cWhen we talk about environmental pollution, illicit waste management, crimes against nature, we are often dealing with very organized and potentially dangerous criminal groups,\u201d says Rudi Bressa, a Italian environmental journalist and the author of a book on illegal trafficking, Trafficanti di natura<\/em><\/a>. And when you look at the equation environmental crime and organized crime, there is one European country that immediately stands out : Italy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, three decades after the murders of Alpi and Hrovatin, the Italian environmental NGO, Legambiente, published its latest report<\/a>. In 2023, 35,487 environmental crimes were recorded in Italy (+15.6% compared to 2022), with an average of 97.2 crimes per day, 4 every hour. These crimes are concentrated in the South of the country, particularly in the four regions with a traditional mafia presence - Campania, Puglia, Sicily and Calabria - where 43.5% of the alleged environmental crimes take place. Among the three types of crimes most committed, the number of recorded incidents in the illegal cement industry continues to rise (13,008 cases, +6.5%), but what is most worrying, reports Legambiente, is the surge in crimes in the waste industry (9,309 cases, +66%). They have risen to the second place, well above wildlife crimes such as illegal poaching, illegal fishing, trafficking of protected species (6,581 cases).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Lagembiente, the entire illegal market in Italy was worth 8.8 billion euros in 2023, with 378 mafia clans involved and high levels of corruption that give them access to public markets and tenders. After releasing its report, the NGO asked the Italian government for a serious commitment in the fight against \u201cecomafias\u201d.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The power of \u201cecomafias\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First used by Legambiente in 1994, the word \u201cecomafia\u201d found its place five years later in the Zingarelli dictionary. \u201cBy coining the term \u2018ecomafia\u2019, we wanted to denounce the perverse intertwining between organized crime, economic crime and, indeed, environmental crime,\u201d says Enrico Fontana, head of the environment and legality observatory at Legambiente.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are recording a greater spread of environmental illegality on the territory of our country which \u2018accompanies\u2019 that of mafias, in particular the \u2018Ndrangheta,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Ndrangheta is one of Italy\u2019s oldest criminal organizations, born in the 18th<\/sup> century in Calabria, and one of the country 's most powerful organized crime syndicates after the fall of the Sicilian mafia, also known as Cosa Nostra. \u201cAlthough the impunity  no longer exists, both the hardships of our judicial system and the direct impact of organized crime in attacking the environment remain,\u201d Fontana adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acoording to Marta Palmisano, a lawyer and criminal law researcher with the universities of Palermo and Torino, difficulties in fighting the ecomafia stem from the fact that organized crime can interfere in parts or in the entire cycle of waste management, from production, provision of services, collection, transportation to processing and disposal of waste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Palmisano, one of the reasons why environmental criminals have chosen the waste sector as a privileged area of activity is the objective complexity that characterizes the management of the waste cycle. Waste has considerable \u201cmobility\u201d within and outside the country, and thus provides numerous opportunities for \u201cinfiltration\u201d. This long \u201cwaste chain\u201d includes various actors \u2013 waste producers, brokers, transporters, warehouses and waste treatment facilities, technicians, companies that legally do business, and even civil servants \u2013 who end up collaborating, more or less consciously, with criminal consortia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Italian experience is particularly significant because the fight against the ecomafias is carried out taking into account the specifics of the [national] context, already tragically known to the Italian criminal law literature,\u201d Palmisano says. \u201cThe same investigative and judicial tools can be used that are usually used in the fight against criminal mafia association including strong coordination between offices during the investigation.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n