Land take and landscape loss: Effect of uncontrolled urbanization in Southern Italy

The present paper describes a research that, based on the evolutionary data of the urban settlement over a period of half a century, shows the changes undergone by the various landscape categories of Southern Italy. The regions involved are four (Campania, Basilicata, Puglia and Calabria) and share renowned urban, economic and social issues such as unauthorised development, low income per capita and organised crime. All this has produced profound transformations on some of the most important and rare Italian landscapes, such as coastal plains and coastal carbonate slabs. Uncontrolled urban sprawl has further provoked an environmental crisis and eco-friendly insularisation of the yet numerous and valuable protected areas of this geographical area, thus leading to a high density of buildings and infrastructures even in national parks, breaking European records in this respect. Through finalised indicators, the characteristics of the evolution occurred have been analytically highlighted, and by using the latest generation satellite data, it is shown how such phenomena have continued to take place with significant energy over the last few years. The result is a picture of environmental threats still very prominent in this southern extremity of the peninsula, above all towards those naturalistic qualities and landscapes that are the main attractions of an intense national and international tourism whose income, however, has not been conveyed in a correct and inclusive way to allow high-level socio-economic conditions of the resident population. Keywords: Urban growth, Land take, Landscape loss, Urban sprinkling, South Ital

Biomass production and land use management in the Italian context: regulations, conflicts, and impacts

Renewable energy sources, such as biomass can make a positive impact on climate change phenomenon by decreasing our dependence on fossil fuels. The use of biomass energy is directly linked to the use of the land, from which biomass feedstock is obtained, such as farm land and forests, and its ecosystem services. The biomass production and the use of land and ecosystem services are usually associated with a wide range of environmental and social impacts, depending on what choices are made regarding what types of biomass are used, as well as where and how they are produced. Choosing management practices that minimize negative impacts and complement planning policies and energy production objectives is often associated with land-use conflicts among both different institutional levels, local, national and European, and different social actors. Yet, European Directive 2009/28/CE establishes that the energy production from renewable energy by 2020, as well as from biofuel, defined for each member state (Annex 1), must be achieved through a “sustainable†production. Such definition is assigned to national and local contexts, arising issues in policy making, conflicts analysis and methodologies. The present paper discusses on the recent acknowledgment of the above mentioned EU directive in several Italian Regions, such as Puglia and Marche, which have defined regulations/guidelines regarding their potential contribution to the national objectives of production and consumption of energy from renewable sources (EFR). Moreover, the present paper confronts such regulations with results found in literature. Several analyses have been done on the energy production from biomass based on technical and economic aspects of the problem. However, few studies have applied integrated approaches able to take into consideration crucial aspects such as biodiversity conservation and landscape fragmentation, as required by EU Directive 2009/28/CE, side by side with the economic and social dimensions. This paper aims at filling this gap proposing the application of an integrated framework of analysis, based on multi-criteria approaches able to take into consideration socio-economic, environmental and landscape criteria, as well as institutional and social conflicts linked to the biomass production.

The potential monetary benefits of reclaiming hazardous waste sites in the Campania region: an economic evaluation

BACKGROUND: Evaluating the economic benefit of reducing negative health outcomes resulting from waste management is of pivotal importance for designing an effective waste policy that takes into account the health consequences for the populations exposed to environmental hazards. Despite the high level of Italian and international media interest in the problem of hazardous waste in Campania little has been done to reclaim the land and the waterways contaminated by hazardous waste. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to reduce the uncertainty about health damage due to waste exposure by providing for the first time a monetary valuation of health benefits arising from the reclamation of hazardous waste dumps in Campania. METHODS: First the criteria by which the landfills in the Campania region, in particular in the two provinces of Naples and Caserta, have been classified are described. Then, the annual cases of premature death and fatal cases of cancers attributable to waste exposure are quantified. Finally, the present value of the health benefits from the reclamation of polluted land is estimated for each of the health outcomes (premature mortality, fatal cancer and premature mortality adjusted for the cancer premium). Due to the uncertainty about the time frame of the benefits arising from reclamation, the latency of the effects of toxic waste on human health and the lack of context specific estimates of the Value of Preventing a Fatality (VPF), extensive sensitivity analyses are performed. RESULTS: There are estimated to be 848 cases of premature mortality and 403 cases of fatal cancer per year as a consequence of exposure to toxic waste. The present value of the benefit of reducing the number of waste associated deaths after adjusting for a cancer premium is euro11.6 billion. This value ranges from euro5.4 to euro20.0 billion assuming a time frame for benefits of 10 and 50 years respectively. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that there is a strong economic argument for both reclaiming the land contaminated with hazardous waste in the two provinces of Naples and Caserta and increasing the control of the territory in order to avoid the creation of new illegal dump sites

Spatial multi-criteria decision support system and strategic environmental assessment: a case study

This contribution focuses on the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) as an important tool to ensure sustainable development and reach a high level of environmental protection. More specifically, this paper provides an evaluation method based on the integration of Geographic Information System (GIS) and Multi-criteria Analysis, named Integrated Spatial Multi-criteria Decision Support System (ISMDSS) to support the preparation of the environmental assessment report and the construction of scenarios for the adoption of urban plans, as an innovative tool that integrates objectives and multidimensional (economic, environmental and social) components, but also different approaches and models for the construction of a long-term shared vision. In particular, considerations are made by presenting a thought-provoking case study on the SEA of the urban plan of the municipality of Marzano di Nola, located in the province of Avellino in the Campania region. The experiment carried out showed the potentiality of the ISMDSS to evaluate the impacts of different scenarios with the aim to development a sustainable urban municipal plan. The spatial dimension is useful in understanding the dynamics that characterize each environmental topic in a specific area, not only by considering the components of the natural and developed environment, but also the interactions with the social and economic components

Effectiveness and efficiency of European Regional Development Fund on separate waste collection: evidence from Italian regions by a stochastic frontier approach

Abstract The purpose of the present paper is to analyze the results of the impact of European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in Convergence regions over the 2007–2013 on separate collection rate of Italian regions. The aim is twofold: propose a groundbreaking analysis that allows us to control both for the effectiveness of the Regulation (EC) No. 1080/2006, by a Difference in differences equation (DID), and the Regions' efficiency in the separate collection process, by a stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). Specifically, the SFA allows us to model the DID equation in order to take account the regions' efficiency in the separate collection process in terms of institutional quality. In particular, we use a panel with two dimensions: temporal—9 yearly observations from 2004 to 2012; and cross-sectional—20 regions. The estimates suggest that ERDF have not contributed to reducing the structural divide in Italy and its managerial slack has triggered in the failure of the convergence objective. Policy implications are discussed

Illegal trafficking and unsustainable waste management in Italy: evidence at the regional level

The presence of organized crime strongly affects sustainable waste management in Italy. In particular, illegal traf cking of waste has become one of the fastest growing areas of crime and one of the most lucrative industries among organized criminal activities, which has now in ltrated both the Italian urban and hazardous waste management cycle. In this study, we aim to investigate the determinants of the illegal traf cking of waste using waste, economic, and enforcement data in a panel analysis over the period 2002-2013. The topic is particularly relevant, given the high heterogeneity across Italian regions which also relates, and eventually leads, to different environmental performances. Our main ndings reveal that, in most Italian regions, enforcement activities do not exert a signi cant deterrence on criminal behaviors; a negative relationship between enforcement and illegal traf cking of waste can be identi ed only for very high levels of enforcement efforts. Moreover, we nd that the major determinants in uencing the rate of illegal traf cking of waste differ between northern-central and southern regions, con rming the existence of a regional dualism. In particular, while in the northern-central area the crime rate is positively related to the level of education and negatively to the adoption of environmentally sound policies, in southern regions the organized activities for illegal traf cking are negatively related to the degree of education attainment and positively to the endowment of waste management plants

Urban Metabolism and Construction & Demolition Waste. Life Cycle Assessment as a tool to support the territorial regeneration

The present research thesis aims to lay the foundations for the development of a model capable of supporting environmental assessment linked to the regeneration of the territory, through the union of two components: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and wasted landscapes. After a first definition of the field of research investigated, which has as its object urban ecosystems in relation to the metabolic flows that cross them, the instrument of LCA is introduced. LCA is born in the industrial field as a tool for assessing the environmental impacts related to the life cycle of products and services and can also focus on individual phases of this cycle, such as that of Waste Management (WM). This tool is linked to individual products, but in recent times, some research topics have investigated the possibility of extending it to one or more activities that characterize the functioning of the territory, in order to give life to a LCA of territorial nature. A first analysis of the territory is conducted through the concept of ecosystem health, that is translated from the ecological to the urban field in order to qualify the urban health from an economic, environmental and social perspective. Through a combination between Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and Geographic Information System (GIS), the territory can be classified according to its level of urban health. Three different perspectives have been considered: “vigour”, “organisation” and “resilience” and according to this framework, a system of indicators has been developed, identifying their territorial distribution. The application provides a subdivision of the Metropolitan Area of Naples (MAN) and the Focus Area (FA) contained in it in different zones with various degrees of resistance to risks and vulnerabilities. The main experimental application of the present research is the use of the LCA tool to evaluate the impacts related to the management of Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) flow, integrated by a Life Cycle Costing (LCC) model. CDW crosses both Campania Region and the Focus Area (FA) selected within the Horizon 2020 project called “REPAiR - Resource Management in Peri-Urban Areas: Going Beyond Urban Metabolism”, to which this thesis is linked. Subsequently, it is introduced a second vision of territorial nature that concerns the territorial outcomes of Urban Metabolism (UM) linked to urban and peri-urban life cycles, which, by exhausting the available resources, generate not only waste, but also wasted landscapes (wastescapes). Wasted landscapes can be, as it will be seen in the following chapters, of various kinds and the attention is focused on the portion of territory characterized by the presence of abandoned industrial buildings. By identifying the abandoned buildings of the FA, a second experimental application examines the case study of the former Rhodiatoce factory, for which, through a calculation model, CDW deriving from a building renewal process is assumed. The same LCA model that was used to assess the impacts of the total flows produced in the Region and in the FA, is used to verify the environmental impacts related to this scenario at the construction scale. This approach represents an exemplification that could be repeated in relation to all the other abandoned industrial buildings, in order to assess the environmental and economic impacts linked to their regeneration. Definitely, the idea is to present a new utility attributable to LCA and to lay the foundations for the creation of an evaluation model which allows to make the decision making phase linked to the regeneration of wasted territories more aware

Modelling solid waste management solutions: The case of Campania, Italy

The waste crisis in Campania has inspired a huge body of literature that has described its complex nature. Quantitative analysis in this regard provides useful insight into single aspects of the problem but from a static perspective. In this work, a dynamic model has been developed to analyse the interactions between the main elements of the waste system in Campania and their evolution over the critical time horizon. The model considers the process of capacity construction that has been developed to deal with the crisis and the flow of waste through the treatment options available, showing how the waste system behaves if such infrastructures are not able to cope with the amounts expected. The model also provides the analytical framework to explore the effects of alternative waste policies. © 2018 Elsevier Lt

Organized Crime, Migration and Human Capital Formation: Evidence from the South of Italy

The presence of organized crime is a pervasive feature of many developed and developing countries. Even if ‘mafia’ organizations have greatly enlarged the geographical scope of their activities, as in the past they are still deeply rooted in specific territories where their presence generates a host of influences on socio-economic performances (perverse social capital). In this paper we analyse the consequences of the presence of organized crime on the long-term accumulation of human capital, a key determinant of economic growth. To do this we build a unique dataset where - among other information - we identify municipalities where the presence of organized crime is particularly pervasive in an Italian region, Calabria, where is based one of the most powerful international criminal organization, 'Ndrangheta. Our results suggest that the presence of organized crime inhibits the accumulation of human capital both directly (reducing the incentive to invest in formal education) and indirectly by increasing migration outflows.Organized crime; human capital; social capital; migration