14 december 2014 BiocideTour in

ENTITLE project international delegation

One day of visits and meetings with local communities in some of the most emblematic places of environmental injustice in Campania.

Program and Participants

The tour is open to the press

To participate write to: [email protected] - 3342270795

Biocidio Tour is organized by A Sud and CDCA – Documentation Center on Environmental Conflicts, within the activities’ week of the research project ENTITLE - European Network for Political Ecology, an Initial Training Network under the Marie Curie actions of FP7, coordinated by ICTA at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and with the collaboration of 8 Universities, 2 NGOs and 1 SME

Go to the project: http://www.cdca.it/spip.php?article2175

| Environmental Justice in |

A journey to the places of the Biocide

From 14 to 19 December 2014 will be in Italy the international delegation of academics and researchers of the research project on Political Ecology ENTITLE - European Network for Political Ecology, for a working week in which will take place workshops, thematic panels, the presentation of Marco Armiero’s new book “Teresa e le altre. Storie di donne nella guerra dei rifiuti in Campania” and an international conference.

Within the week of activities, A Sud associacion and CDCA – Documentation Centre on Environmental Conflicts organize on December 14th a tour that will visit the most emblematic territories of environmental injustice in Campania. The tour will be attended by some territorial committees from , Giugliano e Chiaiano who will meet the international delegations.

Below can be find the details of the tour: dates, times, places, sponsoring organizations and all relevant information to participate.

For further information: Visit the ENTITLE project web page Visit the CDCA web page Visit the A Sud web page

| Why a Biocidio Tour |

Choosing the installation of contaminating production, extractive and disposal facilities, on a given territory without first assessing the impact on the environment and the population, means to decide knowingly that those communities are "expendable" in a misguided idea of development.

The dissolute exploitation of resources and territories operated to the detriment of the rights and beyond the limits of ecosystems endurance, destroys the environment, reduces the health and reveals the inseparable link between the latter and the healthiness of the territory. The systematic violation of the right to health through the poisoning of the territory and population exposure to pollutants has been called in Campania "Biocide".

By working closely with some of the Campania’s realities in denouncing the link between bad land management (with particular reference to the waste cycle) and the increasingly frequent and serious violation of the right to health of the resident communities, the tour will be an opportunity to give visibility to the social paths ongoing on this theme. A path that in Campania has created a wide social coalition around the watchword StopBiocidio against environmental devastation that the territory lives.

A map, the biocide one, that between and travels hundreds of miles of territory ravaged by a model of waste disposal in landfills, incinerators, illegal discharges of toxic and industrial waste.

The objective of the tour: to document and denounce the territorial contamination and its impact on communities living in the affected areas, allow the national and international press to meet in person the significant environmental, social, health and economic mismanagement of the territory, give voice to the affected communities and create opportunity for visibility for the social struggles and demands of the population, promote information and spread awareness on environmental issues, helping to build networks of mutual understanding and solidarity between the territories affected by similar problems.

| The Biocide in Italy |

In Italy as in the rest of Europe the presence of contaminated sites is relevant. According to the European Environment Agency in Italy are located thousands of sites, of which 57 (39 today, after the downgrading of 18 sites of regional interest) are defined by "national interest for reclamation" (SIN) and included in the “National Reclamation Programme" on the basis of the extent of environmental contamination, health risk and social alarm (DM 471/1999). The health impact of polluted sites is the subject of epidemiological investigations of geographical areas at risk. Started in 2007, with funding under the Strategic Programme Environment and Health of the Ministry of Health, the Project SENTIERI (National Epidemiologic Study of the Territories and Settlements Exposed to Risk of Pollution) evaluate the epidemiological evidence causal association between specific causes of death and environmental exposures.

To this it has to be added the systematic impact of this dynamic in disadvantaged contexts in terms of social, political and economic: the periphery, no longer seen as simply a geographical concept, is methodically chosen as the site of activities that destroy the environment by producing health emergency over that burden of the same economic conditions of the population. This happens for example in areas where the agricultural economy is supplanted by the industrial economy or wherever is decided to install systems for municipal and industrial waste disposal, from landfill to incinerators, basing the choice on a purely speculative evaluation and not on techniques able to base the waste cycle on criteria of reducing the impact on health and environment

| Biocidio tour in Campania |

Sunday 14 December 2014 | time 7.30-20.00 (departure from Metro Marconi, B line, Roma)

Campania is one of the Italian regions that not only pays one of the highest price to a deadly development model, but, because of it, became a symbol of the communities in struggle in defense of their territories and health.

After the emergency began in 2008 local communities are gathered in a large social coalition that has chosen the slogan "Stop biocide" to denounce the strong impact of the territorial devastation on the health and life of the population, asking reclamations and health protection. Social mobilization around this issue has again reached in recent months, very high levels.

In the aforementioned study SENTIERI, the list of towns of Campania is very long: in addition to Giugliano, inside Caserta and Naples area, Domitian coast and , there are, among more than 50 municipalities mentioned, Acerra, Aversa, , , , Caserta, , , , , , , Monte di , , , , Santa Maria Vetere, .

The situation is not really different along the Vesuvius coast, in the municipalities of , , , , Naples, , , , , , and .

The health emergency in these territories is determined on one side by a system of disposal of urban waste materials, produced mostly by the city of Naples, according to the logic of the landfill and incineration, and, secondly, by the criminal disposal of special waste through burning and burying. In many cases, in the same sites is possible to find industrial waste illegally disposed and urban waste materials disposed in a decade of waste emergency and subsequent commissarial management.

The toxic tour will visit some of the sites that represent the health and environmental emergency in the region.

| Land of Fires - Terra dei Fuochi |

“Terra dei Fuochi”, the Land of fires is the now famous phrase which indicates the territory comprising the towns of , Giugliano, Atella, Caivano, Acerra, , Marcianise, , , , Mondragone, Castelvolturno and Melito di Napoli, affected by toxic fires with which the is illegally disposing of industrial waste materials, when not through burial in the fields. Since 2010 there have been spills of industrial and nuclear waste materials from northern Italy and northern Europe and it is now undeniable that the increase in the incidence of tumors in this area is related to these phenomena. According to a ARPA Campania report in 2011, an area of 3,000,000 square meters between Regi Lagni, Uttaro, Masseria del Pozzo-Schiavi (in Giugliano area) and the Pianura neighborhood of the city of Naples, results to be affected by a massive presence of toxic waste materials.

The so called "Pact for the Land of Fires", signed on July, 11 between the President of the Campania Region, the presidents of the provinces of Naples and Caserta, the mayors of the municipalities affected by the phenomenon of the fires (including the two chief towns), a delegate of the Minister Interior, the local health authorities and associations active in the area as the ISDE- Doctors for the Environment, has produced few results and fires continue undisturbed.

The tour will lead at the following locations:

Acerra A2a Incinerator

The construction of the incinerator in Acerra (Naples) began in August 2004 by the company Fisia, as representative of the FIBE group, for a capacity of about 600,000 tons of waste treated, built to burn Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) under Ministerial Decree February 5, 1998 as part of the waste plan of the Campania region but designed with an old "grid" technology that allows any waste incineration, also intact and untreated waste.

Construction work began without a proper environmental impact assessment because this was issued while the construction site was already started, also, among the requirements provided there was the one according to which the plant would burn only CDR in order to ensure the compliance of emission limits. Just this requirement has been derogated. The incinerator came into provisional operation March 26, 2009 based on the singular measure no. 64 of 17 March 2009 of General Franco Giannini, vicar of the Secretary to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers with responsibility for Civil Protection Bertolaso, declaring satisfied the requirements of the technical paper entitled "Content and methods of integrated environmental authorization", adopted by the same vicar, notwithstanding the legislation on integrated environmental authorization (AIA) and therefore without the consultation of the affected population according to the said legislation AIA to protect public health.

At the inauguration the plant had not been finished yet (it was only completed the construction of the first line, the second was put into operation May 2, 2009 and the third on May 8, 2009), but even more seriously was not tested. This happened only in July 2010 and only partially; In fact, on July 16, the engineers found that there were all the systems of control and monitoring provided by AIA stated that they would be "subject of separate testing." In essence the identification between controller and controlled at the base of the authorization of the system is still in force as regards the operation of the plant: there is not public monitoring, but only the internal monitoring. On January 16, 2014, came out from the newspapers and from a press release by the Region of Campania that "eco-balls" stored in Campania in the period 2001- 2008 will be burned in the incinerator at Acerra. These wastes resulting from the treatment of toxic wastes of Stir of Giugliano and stored in Ercolano by Fibe in May 2003, during the waste emergency. Exactly the sites where the revelations of repented Camorra members indicate the disposal of toxic waste, starting from Stir of , and where waste was packed, and then stored in the "provisional areas", including the Taverna Re at the border between Giugliano and .

Recently, the decision to burn here also eco-balls stockpiled at the Coda di Volpe site, , caused a strong reaction from the population and committees. These wastes are the same to which, in 2008, the magistrature had placed seals. This decision has rekindled popular opposition committees and citizens that had animated the tough challenges that have accompanied the history of the system from the design stage. A community that fight in defense of their right to health for almost a decade and to which the only response was that of a hard criminalization by media and institutions.

Giugliano Resit landfill and Taverna del Re storage site

Giugliano is the third largest city of Campania: the public prosecutor Alessandro Milita when investigating Resit landfill said, in the Parliamentary Commission on the waste cycle, that pollution of this area can be compared to AIDS, being expected to grow both in the effects that the dispersion of substances from contaminated sites in neighboring countries. Since 80s to mid-90s the boss Bidognetti, through the company Ecology 89, has illegally disposed in Giugliano 800,000 tonnes of waste from companies in the North, as the Acna Cengio; from this the 57,000 tons of leachate threaten the groundwater. According to the expert opinion of the geologist Giovanni Balestri, commissioned by the DDA (District Directorate antimafa) of Naples, by 2064, penetrating through the tuff, poisons will contaminate the aquifer below.

To the Mafia disaster, it has to be added and mixed, the commissarial managements. Portrait of this sacrificed territory, the Sisp (Site of temporary storage), in Contrada Taverna del Re, a storage installation of fuel from waste materials (CDR), an area of about 130 hectares, the largest provisional storage site of packaged waste in Campania; here have been accumulated and continue to lie six million tons of eco-balls never burned because not regular.

On April 5, 2014, the prefect of Naples, Antonio Francesco Musolino, got the dissolution of the City Council of Giugliano on charges of Camorra infiltration, denouncing the serious environmental damage and poisoning of the territory resulting in impairment of health and living conditions of citizens, and failure to comply with the closure orders of wells polluted by Resit. What all this might mean in terms of food security and health damage in the second vegetable market in Italy after Milan with agricultural production per hectare higher than any other part of Italy is easy to imagine.

Chiaiano Chiaiano Landfill and Fondo Rustico A. Lamberti – Selva Lacandona

The neighborhood of Chiaiano, north of Naples, is characterized by a wooded area called Selva di Chiaiano. In this area there are numerous caves, deep up to 100 meters, once exploited for the extraction of tuff and later used by crime as illegal landfills for hazardous substances from all over Italy.

The Chiaiano landfill was born in one of these caves previously used as a shooting range. Since 2008 the activists of the committees have reported the connection between business, institutions and crime in the management of the disposal site. In the period of the waste emergency in 2008, the Chiaiano landfill was chosen by the government of Silvio Berlusconi and the super commissioner Guido Bertolaso as a site for the emergency disposal. Months before the publication of the tender, companies as Edil car and Ibi Idroimpianti respectively of families Carandente Tartaglia and D'Amico, close to the Casalesi, Mallardo Giugliano and Polverino Marano camorra clans, were already sure of winning it. The subsequent investigation revealed, among other things, that the bottom of the landfill is badly waterproofed and that leachate will come sooner or later to the aquifer.

But before the waste emergency of 2008, before the social struggles of those years, Chiaiano and the caves of the Park of the hills were already the place in which bury the waste of Naples. A few months ago the discovery, made by observation of the aerial photos by the geologist Franco Ortolani, the disappearance of one of the many caves, filled with no one knows what.

In the early stages of the most heated and radical protest, the entire population was accused to bargain for the Camorra objecting to the construction of the landfill. The site was declared a strategic interest and militarized. Investigations revealed only later where resided really ties with crime: in politics and in business. Within the site militarized, then, was this a fund confiscated to the Camorra 14 years ago. It was determined so the paradox that, in an area surrounded by the military, citizens were denied the right to demonstrate while a farm related to crime could freely continue working. Today the Fund Rustico A. Lamberti was returned to the community through the efforts of the same activists who fought against the Chiaiano landfill; social activities take place there: fields of environmental education, working with inmates of juvenile detention, wine and peaches "anticamorra".

| The international delegation|

The delegation will be made up of university researchers from all over the world and part of the ENTITLE network. Will be present as speakers of the course, which will be held in the following days in Rome, and will participate in the Biocide Tour academics, activists and experts on environmental issues including:

Stephanie Danielle Roth - Activist who began her research with Edward Goldsmith, founder of The Ecologist magazine. Specializes in research on social movements so for environmental justice and support to the demands of local communities. For eight years, Stephanie has followed the campaign "Save Rosia Montana". Today Stephanie lives in Berlin where she coordinates the campaign "Stop TTIP" despite not having stopped supporting the battle against mining projects in Rosia Montana.

Anders Lund Hansen - Associated Professor of Human Geography at Lund University. His research is moving in between politics, ecology and economy, taking an interest in land management, land grabbing, urban policies, socio-geographical, gentrification, new media. He published in Political Geography, European Planning Studies, Geoforum, Urban Studies magazines.

| Info, contacts |

For the press: tour is open to the press with a limited number of places. To send a request to participate write to : [email protected]