ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the environmental crisis in the Bel Paese, as Italy is often referred to with some irony. In fact, in spite of narratives and self-representations based on ideas of its landscape, heritage and slow food, for decades Italy has witnessed a systematic erosion of its territory and a dramatic increase in pollution, stemming from a substantially unregulated industrial presence. From North to South, at different stages of post-Second World War development, both large process industries (oil, petrochemical- and chemical-related) employing thousands of workers, and smaller family-based firms, operating in highly polluting sectors, have become increasingly central to the local economy. For example, Sardinia (Sarroch, Porto Torres), Sicily (Milazzo, Gela, Augusta, Siracusa, Melilli, Priolo) and Apulia (Manfredonia, Taranto) are home to some of the largest petrochemical and steel works in Europe. In the Central and Northern regions of the country, other similar industries are also present (Falconara, Livorno, Marghera); but these areas have also been at the epicentre of another type of industrial development, and one which has been much studied in international economic literature, the ‘Italy of industrial districts’. In fact, Veneto, Lombardy, Le Marche and Tuscany are regions of Italy that have based their wealth on the concept of ‘small is beautiful’: that is, on the concentration of a series of small factories in given areas, which specialize in different phases of the same production process, run and operated by members of a single family with the help of a few workers (Becattini, 2002). 2
