Page 123 - Supplemento 2-2016 (ENG)

Tackling Environmental Crime throUgh standardized Methodologies

revision of the existing situation to make it compatible with the conservation
of life on the planet. This means that the global problem cannot be resolved
unless each State commits itself to saving each of its own territories. Let us not
forget that the source of law remains the State and that EU treaties and other
international treaties are based on the sovereignty of all States.

Of course we can and we must act on a Community and international
level, but the first, immediate, and in many cases the most decisive intervention,
depends on the action of single States. Basically, it is essential that every State
or, better, every “ political Community”, do what it can to safeguard its own
territory, neutralizing the action of those who “devastate” or “alienate” it, in
order to have “greater profits” or, simply, to fulfill the objective of “making
money”.

It follows that, on a strictly juridical level, it must be verified that each sin-
gle legal system is able to face this enormous challenge, or whether, as in Italy,
there have been “deviations” that need correcting to enable those systems to
achieve their aims. Focusing our attention on Italy, what becomes immediately
clear is that there has been a modification of legal institutes regarding owner-
ship and it it these modifications that, on a legal level, prevent concrete action
for the safeguarding of the territory. I mean that the jurist, even at a first, cur-
sory glance, discovers that the primary cause of the destruction of our territory
is deeply rooted in an erroneous concept of “private propriety”, according to
which each person can do whatever they want with their property, even if they
damage the landscape and territory that belong to everyone, oblivious to the
fundamental concept of the “constitutional primacy” of “collective owner-
ship” of territory. So the task of the lawyer is, above all, to correct this over-
valuation of private property, real position of which, in the general order of
things, is absolutely subordinate to the collective ownership of the sovereign
people.

Only if we eliminate this legal “superpower” underpinning financial spe-
culation and the actions of supranational companies pursuing their own perso-
nal interest to the detriment of the collective good, does it become possible to
eradicate the primary cause of the destruction of territory and put into place
concrete legal instruments for its protection. Unfortunately, even the theory of

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