Rethinking environmental displacement: vulnerability and mobility in Italy

Environmental degradation has severe consequences on the availability of natural resources and may create a huge pressure on human communities security and vulnerability (IPCC; 2007): since globalization has been characterised by an unequal economic development, so, environmental degradation, augmented by climate change, that directly links with the economic growth and the industrialisation jeopardises the lives of the the most vulnerable peoples, namely the indigenous (Kronik and Verner; 2010) and, generally speaking, the women (Enarson; 2000) provoking forced mobility. Recent researches on the link between natural environment depletion and vulnerability focused on developing countries areas (among the others UNDP; 1997 and UNEP; 2009): this choice, far to be neutral, reveals a politic choice, that will be investigated later. For this reason one can recognise that the degradation of the environment is socially and spatially constructed (Lonergan; 1998). I have decided to provide an analysis of human displacements in Italy, in the case of Sarno 1998 landslide to demonstrate how also in Northern countries provoking threats to human health and mobility, and damage to economic sectors such as energy, transport, forestry, agriculture, and tourism (Stern; 2006 and 2008).