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Coping with Floods in Italy: Learning from the Past to Plan Future Adaptation

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Water Law, Policy and Economics in Italy

Part of the book series: Global Issues in Water Policy ((GLOB,volume 28))

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Abstract

After more than 150 years from the birth of the Country, Italians should have learnt that coping with floods is a never-ending challenge. The strategies to deal with it require the fundamental awareness that the key factors are not just money, loans and financial flows, but consciousness, knowledge, expertise, sharing, equity. The multiple routes include adapting to climate change, smart forecasting, assessing river basin management, improving the design standards of engineering works, taking care of hillslope and river maintenance, revising dam operation strategies, reducing exposure as well as vulnerability to flood risk, discontinuing land consumption, improving urban resilience.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Both aspects are touched upon, also with reference to floods, by Martinengo et al. in Chap. 16 of this volume. For a description of conflicts over the allocation of decision-making powers, see also, in this volume, Chap. 15 by Alberton.

  2. 2.

    It should be noted that in the 1960s the concept of climate change was far from mainstream in science, including engineering, but in those years some scholars were suggesting that long-term climate fluctuations were capable of modifying basic hydrological statistics usually assumed to be time-invariant (see, e.g., Yevjevich 1963).

  3. 3.

    The Regi Lagni are a set of rectilinear and mostly man-made channels covering 1095 km2 in 99 towns of Campania. They were built as part of canalisation, land reclamation and flood prevention works on the Clanio River between 1610 and 1616 by viceroy Pedro Fernández de Castro during the Spanish rule of southern Italy.

  4. 4.

    Law no. 184 of 19 March 1952 (“Lotta contro l’erosione e la difesa del territorio dalle esondazioni”).

  5. 5.

    Law no. 632 of 27 July 1967 (“Autorizzazioni di spesa per l’esecuzione di opere di sistemazione e difesa del suolo”).

  6. 6.

    See Commissione Interministeriale per lo Studio della Sistemazione Idraulica e della Difesa del Suolo (1970). The Report is also available at <www.censu.it/attivita/atti-della-commissione-de-marchi-1970/>

  7. 7.

    Ibidem, Vol. 1, p. 48 (the original sentence reads “Fra le varie preoccupazioni che hanno accompagnato la Commissione nello svolgimento del proprio lavoro, non è compresa quella che le generazioni future siano destinate a restare inoperose nell’ambito degli stessi problemi”).

  8. 8.

    Law no. 183 of 18 May 1989 (“Norme per il riassetto organizzativo e funzionale della difesa del suolo”).

  9. 9.

    Among others: Law no. 267 of 3 August 1998 (“Conversione in legge, con modificazioni, del decreto-legge 11 giugno 1998, n. 180, recante misure urgenti per la prevenzione del rischio idrogeologico ed a favore delle zone colpite da disastri franosi nella regione Campania ”); and Law no. 365 of 11 December 2000 (“Conversione in legge, con modificazioni, del decreto-legge 12 ottobre 2000, n. 279, recante interventi urgenti per le aree a rischio idrogeologico molto elevato ed in materia di protezione civile, nonché a favore delle zone della regione Calabria danneggiate dalle calamità idrogeologiche di settembre ed ottobre 2000”).

  10. 10.

    On 10 September 2000, a flood in Soverato killed 14 people, including some handicapped ones.

  11. 11.

    On Italia Sicura , see also, in this volume, Chap. 16 by Martinengo et al.

  12. 12.

    See Il trovatore, music by G. Verdi, lyrics by S. Cammarano and L.E. Bardare, after A.G. Gutiérrez’s El Trovador. The first show was held on 19 January 1853 in Rome, at the Apollo Theatre, further destroyed after the 1870 flood.

  13. 13.

    The original sentence reads: “Piove sul bagnato: lagrime su sangue, sangue su lagrime”.

  14. 14.

    The Italian idiomatic expression “nani e ballerine” (“dwarves and dancers”), crafted in the 1980s, was used to refer to the assorted group of sycophants that surrounded the Italian political establishment of that time.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by Fondazione Cariplo, grant 2017-0708, “FLORIMAP – smart FLOod RIsk MAnagement Policies”.

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  1. Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Renzo Rosso

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  1. Renzo Rosso
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Correspondence to Renzo Rosso .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Law, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Paolo Turrini

  2. Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Udine, Udine, Italy

    Antonio Massarutto

  3. Faculty of Law and School of International Studies, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Marco Pertile

  4. Centre for Geography, Resources, Environment, Energy and Networks, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy

    Alessandro de Carli

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Rosso, R. (2021). Coping with Floods in Italy: Learning from the Past to Plan Future Adaptation. In: Turrini, P., Massarutto, A., Pertile, M., de Carli, A. (eds) Water Law, Policy and Economics in Italy . Global Issues in Water Policy, vol 28. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69075-5_2

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