Victims in the ‘land of fires’: illegal waste disposal in the Campania region, Italy”

This chapter aims to shed some light on this phenomenon mainly through the lens of the victims of this environmental crime, and challenges the idea of being the environmental crime a crime without victims. Indeed, as we show in this chapter the victims are the main actor that fought against the illegal waste dumping. All along the 20 years of the Campania environmental conflicts, the victims have reinforced their networks unveiling the environmental burden of waste illegal trafficking, and denouncing the tragic health consequences of such activity. The findings allows us to drow some preliminary conclusions that, in the last years, victims are playing an important role in influencing: (i) the recognition of waste-related crime as penal felony by the Italian Legislation, (ii) the promotion of epidemiological studies to investigate the relation between health and the illegal and legal waste dumping practices, (iii) the launching of judicial actions against those actors which got rich thanks to their illegal waste businesses.