Page 73 - Supplemento 2-2016 (ENG)

Tackling Environmental Crime throUgh standardized Methodologies

Third aspect: the government of the territory. Italy is a nation of small
towns: according to ISTAT (Italian Institute for statistics) 70% of the towns (that
are the seats of local administration) has a population of 5000 inhabitants or less.
25% of the Italian population resides in towns with a low level of urbanisation,
which make up two thirds of their total number. These towns often represent a
very large but sparsely populated territory, which, because of its nature, requires
control activities that only a complete social organisation can offer. Without
human presence in small centres it’s impossible to ensure a minimal level of
governance of the territory. And this central consideration should be pivotal to
the adjustments of the policies aiming to reorganise the administration and the
territory. I am mentioning this here because I think that the governance of the
territory, the presence of the State in the territory, and the presence of the citi-
zens in the territory, are a fundamental building block in the protection of the
environment. And I say that there are a series of proposals, also pending in par-
liament, aiming at the right objective: rationalising and enabling pools - both for
services and for functions – therefore ensuring common services. Law 56 of
2014 is a step in this direction. But when the merging of municipalities and the
merging of local autonomies are forcibly determined, there is a risk that the result
is not what was expected: there is a risk of freeing certain territorial areas of citi-
zens, removing the presence of the very people who are clearly capable of gover-
ning those guarantees for the protection of the territory.

There is another aspect we must try at least to keep under control: it is
obviously right, when we speak of rationalisation, to try to contain public
expenditure – when excessive – but not always. When these roadmaps are put
in place, this is done in order to build a future perspective. I mean, if I cut a
service in a mountain area because of the number of users, this service is
obviously regarded as uneconomic; but this service guarantees a presence and
a level of social protection. Mountain areas and scarcely populated areas must
be assessed not on the basis of an economic rationale, but within logic of per-
spective. What are the costs for protection that would be incurred in order to
fill the gaps generated by the abandonment of certain areas by the citizens?
This is what I am trying to transfer to local administrations, but also on a natio-
nal government level, in the role I have been given: to guarantee the performan-

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