In the Name of Science and Technology: The Post-Political Environmental Debate and the Taranto Steel Plant (Italy)

Greco, Lidia; Bagnardi, Francesco

doi:10.3197/096327118x15321668325939

Cited by 9 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…The serious environmental impacts of the largest iron and steel plant in Europe began to be perceived as a problem by the Taranto's civil society in recent times, in conjunction with the privatization of the industrial pole in 1995 [6]. Notwithstanding the death of 93 ILVA workers in 1974 [58] and some previous important environmental protests, the social recognition of the environmental crisis started slowly in the nineties and was followed by an institutional acknowledgment (Law 426/1998).…”

Section: The Environmental Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The pollution generated by industrial activities has had significant negative impacts on the health of the local population. In 2019, the European Court of Human Rights condemned the Italian State for failing to protect the health and life of Taranto citizens: the procedure was started in 2016 after the correlation between the pollutants emitted by heavy industry located in Taranto and the oncological incidence was documented [6]. A more detailed picture of the Taranto's health crisis is given by SENTIERI, the mentioned epidemiological study that examines the mortality causes in all SIN areas since 2007.…”

Section: The Health Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The demonstrations of distrust towards national and local politics are recurrent. The debate on environmental and employment issues related to the ex-ILVA plant (now Arcelor Mittal) has manifested itself within institutions and public opinion in a form that Greco and Bagnardi [6] defined as post-political with two well-defined factions, those of environmentalists and industrialists, "failing to problematize the multiple dimensions of environmental injustice and to connect the crisis to broader social relations of production".…”

Section: The Political and Institutional Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this paper, the attention is focused on the case of Taranto, a city located in Southern Italy. The area of Taranto, due to its peculiar environmental, occupational, social and health conditions, can be considered as a complex crisis area [6]. The area is officially recognized by the Italian state as a crisis area from both the environmental and the socioeconomic point of view.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Due to the severity of the crisis and its peculiarities, the case of Taranto can be defined as "extreme and paradigmatic" [7] as well as unique in the Italian panorama. Such a uniqueness depends on the intensity of the crisis that, under different perspectives (e.g., socio-economic, health, environmental, political) and for several decades, distressed the area in a way that required an increasing attention by several institutions both at national and European level [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Well-Being and Sustainability in Crisis Areas: The Case of Taranto

et al. 2021

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Unresilient and fragile regions need methods and data able to make policy-makers acknowledge the specific criticalities by which they are affected, so as to build effective development strategies and policies. This research explores whether and to what extent well-being and sustainability measurement frameworks are able to recognize crisis areas. We identified Taranto (Italy), declared as both a National Priority Contaminated Site and a Complex Industrial Crisis area, as a paradigmatic and extreme case of crisis areas and adopted the single case approach to address our research question. After reviewing several frameworks able to measure well-being at local level, we focused on Benessere Equo e Sostenibile dei Territori (Equitable and Sustainable Territorial Well-being, BESdT). We used two aggregate indexes to analyze data, namely the Adjusted Mazziotta-Pareto Index and the Adjusted Differences Mean Index. The study shows that, although BESdT does detect some criticalities of the examined area, it seems not able to adequately frame the multifaceted crisis that affects the area of Taranto. Even in presence of a full-blown crisis, the problematic situation does not always reflect into lower territorial performance, neither at the level of single indicators nor at the level of entire domains. Such discrepancy appears to be particularly evident within the economic domain. The paper ends with a discussion on the research and policy implications and some proposals for further research.

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Section: The Environmental Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Health Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Political and Institutional Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Well-Being and Sustainability in Crisis Areas: The Case of Taranto

et al. 2021

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Toxic pollution and labour markets: uncovering Europe’s left-behind places

Bez,

Virgillito

2024

Rev Reg Res

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This paper looks at the co-evolution of toxic industrial pollution and economic deprivation by means of spillovers from the plant’s production activities. Geolocalised facility-level data from the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) are used to calculate annual chemical-specific pollution, weighted by its toxicity. We combine the latter with regional data on employment, wages, and demographics sourced from Cambridge Econometrics, covering more than 1200 NUTS‑3 regions in 15 countries, over the period 2007–2018. We employ quantile regressions to detect the heterogeneity across regions and understand the specificities of the 10th and 25th percentiles. Our first contribution consists in giving a novel and comprehensive account of the geography of toxic pollution in Europe, both at facility and regional level, disaggregated by sectors. Second, we regress toxic pollution (intensity effect) and pollutant concentration (composition effect) on labour market dimensions of left-behind places. Our results point to the existence of economic dependence on noxious industrialisation in left-behind places. In addition, whenever environmental efficiency-enhancing production technologies are adopted we observe associated labour-saving effects in industrial employment, but positive regional spillovers. Through the lens of economic geography, our results call for a new political economy of left-behind places within the realm of sustainable development.

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State-corporate legal symbiosis and social harm: the case of the steel factory ‘Ilva’ in Taranto, Italy

Nicoli Aldini

2024

Crime Law Soc Change

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For more than a decade, epidemiological surveys have shown that Taranto, Italy, has a critical health situation. In particular, two epidemiological reports have established a causal link between mortality and morbidity in Taranto and the industrial production of Ilva, one of Europe’s largest steel mills. Despite its negative impact on local health, Ilva has been allowed to produce thanks to a favorable legal framework. In particular, this article focuses on seven years central to the recent history of Ilva (2011–2017), in which the state has engaged in frenetic and compulsive lawmaking aimed to establish a favorable legal environment for Ilva to continue producing. It shows how the law has become an avenue for the Italian state and Ilva to establish a symbiotic relationship that has created the conditions to produce and reproduce harmful corporate practices. These laws are presented in juxtaposition with academic research and epidemiological surveys on Taranto’s public health, thus showing how the Italian state has responded to the increasing amount of evidence of corporate harm done in Taranto. The article contributes to the criminological scholarship on state-corporate crime and social harm by discussing the role of state law in the production and reproduction of harmful corporate practice. It also advances the literature on the Ilva case with a novel socio-legal reading of the socioenvironmental conflict ongoing in Taranto.

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In the Name of Science and Technology: The Post-Political Environmental Debate and the Taranto Steel Plant (Italy)

Cited by 9 publications

References 43 publications

Well-Being and Sustainability in Crisis Areas: The Case of Taranto

Well-Being and Sustainability in Crisis Areas: The Case of Taranto

Toxic pollution and labour markets: uncovering Europe’s left-behind places

State-corporate legal symbiosis and social harm: the case of the steel factory ‘Ilva’ in Taranto, Italy

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