Italian cities were on the frontline of climate change, and suffering from its impact already, exposing the need for a national climate adaptation plan, a report said on Tuesday.
Titled “Climate has already changed”, the report was provided by Legambiente — Italy’s largest environmental group — and discussed among experts and officials at a conference.
It was based on data from a variety of public research institutes and universities, and on the mapping of severe weather events, providing a fresh picture of how Italian cities were hit by climate change effects.
These included damages caused by flooding, storms, tornados, rivers’overflowing, and by prolonged draught and heat waves.
“Since 2010, some 563 extreme events have been registered on the map of climate risk, with some 350 municipalities suffering a significant impact,” Legambiente said in the report.
“In 2018, our country has been hit by 148 extreme events that resulted in 32 victims and over 4,500 displaced people.”
“Floods alone have led to 68 victims in Italy from 2014 to 2018,” it continued.
Also highlighted in the report were some cost-related analyses provided by Italy’s National Institute for Environment Protection and Research (ISPRA) and by the National Research Council (CNR).
According to ISPRA, the country spent some 5.6 billion euros (6.2 billion U.S. dollars) on hydrogeological risk prevention projects between 1998 and 2008.
In the same period, the CNR estimated that some 20 billion euros (22 billion U.S. dollars) were spent on interventions to remedy damages caused by hydrogeological instability.
“In short, the ratio between prevention and repair is about one to four,” the report stressed.
Cities were considered as “the environment most at risk in terms of consequences of climate change,” the report said.
This is not only because they hosted most of the country’s population, but also because severe weather events “have increased in proportion, and are expected to become even more frequent, and the same goes for the damages they can bring about,” it explained.
The cities considered most at risk were Rome and Milan (the country’s two largest), then Turin and Genoa in the north, and Naples, Catania, Palermo, Bari, and Reggio Calabria in the south.
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