While Italy is under the constant threat of rough weather, Lega Ambiente, one of most important environmentalist NGO in Italy, has spread the data of the “Ecosystem Risk” research, which had the goal to determine the percentage of hydro-geological risk all over the Italian territory.

The research monitored different parameters, regarding various risk-mitigation strategies available for municipalities. Results are frightening: the whole country run the risk of landslides and floods. 5.581 municipalities, the 70% of the total amount, are under hydro-geological risk: 1.700 municipalities are prone to landslides only, 1.285 to floods, 2.596 to both of them.

If we look at data region by region, the situation appears even more serious. In the following table we can observe the sad 100% record of Calabria, Umbria and Valle d'Aosta, but better result gained by other regions like Puglia and Sardegna is not so good as it seems. In theory risks don’t look that bad, but real facts demonstrate something else: for example the city of Cagliari, capital of Sardegna, was overwhelmed in October 2008 by a flood that caused 4 dead, destruction of houses, and a final bill of 35 millions of Euro. Looking also at other regional capitals, among the most populated ones, 17 exceed parameters. Only Bari, Trieste and – apart from the acqua alta – Venice are ok.

These data are certainly due to the morphological characteristics of Italy: the territory has a delicate equilibrium among different ecosystem varieties, from high alpine mountains to ultra-urbanized coasts.

Nevertheless, the irresponsible urbanization is another reason to be charged for these conditions: years and years of wild construction, absurd deforestations, modified waterways, town plans corrected under the builders' supervisions, building abuses… there's never ending list of bad functioning in prevention. It brought to a fool Anthropization that ruined the environment we are living in and also to a huge loss of money: for example, think about the environmental damage of 1 billion of euro caused by the construction of the high speed railway between Bologna and Florence...

Climate change can only make this scenery worse, what will happen in the future? Is Italy above all that ready to fight for its environment? To get involved in disaster prevention? The report clearly said that climate change is a real problem, and actually almost all nations are in danger.

Institutions have the duty to decide changes in a fast way, to provide a risk-mitigation plan as soon as it’s possible, in order to prevent the citizens from other disasters. But how is it possible if so far, as it has been denounced by different NGO leaders, the 492 million of Euro designated for the regional solidarity fund for civil protection are not allocated yet?

This fund is used by regional government to implement the risk-mitigation activity, but now (actually since 2007) that money will not be guaranteed until the financial law approval, expected in December. Two months, and years of work to implement the plan. In the meantime, are we going to see another “foreseen tragedy”, as Messina and Catania flood as been defined by media and politicians in these days?