ABSTRACT
At the end of the 2000s, Italy experienced the emergence of a new cycle of environmental mobilizations at the local level against infrastructure projects, contributing to a renewal of discourse on the environment and introducing new forms of collective action. In 2009, almost 166 spontaneously born citizens’ committees were engaged in a variety of forms of contentious politics in Tuscany related to the environment. This group eventually formed an informal regional platform – the Tuscan Network of Citizens’ Committees – to share common problems, alternative information and strategies. A similar phenomenon happened in Veneto between 2011 and 2013, where hundreds of citizens’ groups mobilizing against a variety of environmental threats – highways, hydroelectric power stations, waste incinerators and regasification plants, among others – met regularly under the banner of a common platform called «the Regional Network of Environmental Committees». More visible and sustained than in other places, these spontaneous citizen mobilizations found one of their key resources in the participation of several experts and in the use of expert knowledge. Close examination shows that the mobilization of expertise and research into credible and feasible alternatives were the core characteristics of this wave of Italian «new environmentalism».
