Extreme events, Italy third in the EU for number of victims and damages:«The money for adaptation is there, there is no plan to use it»

According to estimates by the European Environment Agency, from 1990 to today climate change has caused 22 thousand deaths and 92 billion euros lost in our country

Science warned us, reality reminded us.The floods that in recent days they shocked Emilia-Romagna are forcing Italy to deal once again with the impact of climate change and the neglect of the territory.In recent decades, extreme weather events have occurred with increasing frequency in different areas of the world.Even in Europe the balance is dramatic:according to the estimates ofEuropean Environment Agency, between 1990 and 2021 extreme weather events caused 195 thousand victims and 560 billion euros in damage.Comparing the data from different EU countries, it turns out that Italy is third - after Germany and France - in terms of number of victims and economic losses.Over the last thirty years, our country has recorded 22 thousand deaths and 92 billion euros in damage due to extreme weather events.«Italy is a country geologically predisposed to hydrogeological instability, but we have largely contributed to making the territory fragile», he explains to Open Francesco Bosello, professor of Environmental Economics at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice and senior scientist of the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC).«If we put concrete everywhere, we waterproof the soil and we take away space from the rivers, then we cannot be surprised if these events are particularly harmful», reasons Bosello.

Italian delays in adaptation

When it comes to climate policies, there are two watchwords:mitigation and adaptation.The first refers to the reduction of emissions, which is essential for slowing down global warming.Adaptation, often more neglected, indicates all those measures that allow us to prevent - or minimize - the damage caused by climate change.And it is precisely on adaptation actions that, as the floods in Emilia-Romagna reminded us, Italy suffers from a chronic delay.An example?The 8 billion euros of the anti-hydrogeological disaster fund, allocated and never spent.Or the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (Pnacc), last updated in June 2015.«The resources are there, but there is no plan to ground the projects – explains Bosello -.The adaptation is very effective and can reduce damage by up to 80%.If we had had a management system for the extreme event in Emilia, instead of 5 billion in damages we could have had zero."

Italy is one of the European countries most exposed to the consequences of extreme weather events.Second the latest Ispra report on hydrogeological instability, relating to 2021, 93.9% of Italian municipalities are at risk from landslides, floods or coastal erosion.As regards floods, 6.8 million citizens are exposed, while the regions most at risk are Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Campania, Veneto, Lombardy and Liguria.The situation is particularly critical in Emilia.Ispra data show that, in a "medium danger" scenario, 45.6% of the entire regional territory - where 60% of the population lives - is considered at risk of flooding.As regards the risk of landslides, there are 565 thousand buildings in Italy located in "high" or "very high" danger areas:3.9% of the total.Considering the risk of flooding, however, one building in ten is at risk, equal to approximately one and a half million properties.«The consequences of all these phenomena will be exacerbated by climate change, but the truth is that we are already unprepared to face the current risk», warns Bosello.

Future scenarios

According to the report “Risk analysis:climate change in Italy", the probability of risk from extreme events has increased by 9% in the last twenty years.According to the document drawn up by the CMCC, "all sectors of the Italian economy are negatively impacted by climate change".However, the greatest losses concern infrastructure, agriculture and the tourism sector.As regards the estimation of economic damage, the impact of extreme events is closely linked to the success of climate policies.In other words:the more the planet's temperature increases, the higher the costs become.They range from the current 0.5% of GDP up to 8% at the end of the century, in the event of a global temperature increase of more than 4°C (compared to the pre-industrial period).

Faced with this situation, adaptation actions become even more urgent.Although, warns Bosello, they can only work up to a certain point:«If an event like the one in Emilia-Romagna occurs three times a year, then the protection measures are not enough.This is why it is essential, together with adaptation, to reduce emissions:only in this way can we lower the probability of these events occurring."There is no shortage of virtuous examples, but they often only arrived after a tragedy had already occurred.This is the case of Veneto, which after the 2010 flood launched a plan for safety from hydraulic risk, which included - among other things - the construction of expansion tanks for rivers.«There are many successful examples – concludes the CMCC scientist -.But they are few, extemporaneous and above all they are not done in a systematic way."