Ecological Legacies. Italyʼs Environmental History from Catastrophe to Responsibility

This contribution examines how Italy’s contemporary history can be read through the lens of its environmental transformations, showing how human activity has left deep material and political legacies across the peninsula. It traces the interplay between natural disasters, slow forms of ecological decline, and the recurrent tendency of institutions to prioritise emergency responses over long-term prevention. By reconstructing the evolution of ideas and activism related to nature and territory, from postwar conservationism to the rise of political mobilisations such as the anti-nuclear movement and today’s campaigns for environmental justice, the analysis highlights how growing ecological awareness has gradually reshaped both civic engagement and state policy. Drawing on recent historiography, the contribution demonstrates how this perspective reinterprets key narratives of Italy’s political and economic modernisation, exposing the unequal distribution of ecological costs and the increasing centrality of issues such as pollution, waste management, and territorial conflicts.