More than half of Italian municipalities are exposed to hydraulic or landslide risk. And even though we have known this for years, and the funds available for intervention have even increased, construction sites remain inexorably at a standstill. This is what a report by the Corte dei Conti approved at the end of July reveals — a report that geologists from the Società italiana di Geologia ambientale (Sigea) read as yet another confirmation of a problem that has long been known and that no one has yet truly addressed.

The Corte dei Conti's alarm on hydrogeological instability

For the first time, the court of auditors has brought together data from four different public databases: Ispra-Idrogeo, the national open data platform for consulting, sharing and downloading maps and data on hydrogeological instability; the Repertorio nazionale degli interventi per la difesa del suolo (Rendis); the Bdap-Mop system (which cross-references the public administrations database with the Monitoraggio delle opere pubbliche); and the ReGiS platform, which monitors the Piano nazionale di ripresa e resilienza, in order to track every intervention against hydrogeological instability from start to finish: from risk mapping through to the completion of works.

The result is a snapshot of a country that is investing more than before, yet building at the same pace as always — that is to say, far too slowly. Of the more than 28,000 interventions catalogued in ReNDiS, funding has grown considerably in recent years, thanks in part to the ProteggItalia programme — the national plan against hydrogeological instability — and to the Pnrr. But more money has not translated into more completed works. Looking at 5,463 interventions from a financial perspective as well, the Corte finds that of the more than 3.17 billion euros financed, actual payments cover just over 41 per cent of the resources. And the situation is worst precisely where it most needs to improve: interventions against floods and landslides, which absorb the largest share of funds, are also the slowest to progress.

The Pnrr is no exception: of the 1,350 projects tracked through ReGiS, worth approximately 1.9 billion euros, spending commitments reach 79 per cent of resources, but actual payments stop at 44.4 per cent. The Corte's reading is clear: the problem is not a lack of money, but the public system's inability to turn it into completed construction sites — hampered by the fragmentation of responsibilities across different levels of government and by data that remains far too incomplete.

In 5 years, nothing has changed

For Antonello Fiore, national president of Sigea, the real problem is not so much what the 2026 report says, but the fact that it says the same things as the 2021 one. Five years on, he argues, the picture is that of a country system still at a standstill, and the ongoing climate crisis only makes matters worse.

The comparison between the two documents, according to Sigea, is damning. Even back in 2021, the Corte flagged that earmarked resources were not getting construction sites started; today the same story repeats itself. In 2021, calls were made to unify the monitoring platforms; today ReNDiS, BDAP-MOP and ReGiS remain three separate worlds, to the point that the Corte had to cross-reference them manually in order to reconstruct the history of individual sites. The proliferation of steering committees and commissioners denounced five years ago has not accelerated anything, and average timelines remain stuck at 4–5 years per intervention. Technical staff are still lacking in small municipalities, and risk management continues to respond to emergencies rather than prevent them.

Sigea does not stop at sounding the alarm. The association has already delivered to the minister for Civil Protection, Nello Musumeci, a three-point manifesto designed, the geologists stress, without requesting a single additional euro — which will be officially presented in autumn in Rome. The three points are as follows:

• Attestato di Pericolosità Naturale (APeN): mandatory in every property sale and purchase, based on the official cartography from Ispra, Ingv, Cnr and Autorità di Bacino, to inform buyers of how exposed a property is to landslides, floods, earthquakes and coastal erosion.
• Risk education in schools: 1 per thousand of the resources allocated to structural interventions to be dedicated to information campaigns and educational programmes in schools, managed at a regional level with Uffici Scolastici and environmental associations.
• Continuous monitoring and thirty-year planning: a Revolving Fund for pre-project geological surveys in local authorities, plus a Thirty-Year Fund for land protection works, with priorities determined solely on the basis of scientific evidence and the exposed population.

The idea, in essence, is to stop chasing emergencies and start preventing them, by making better use of the money that is already available.

The agreement that may be a first step

A first result — we do not know how closely linked to the Corte dei Conti's analysis — has already arrived: just a few days later, the government signed a new agreement with Sogesid to accelerate interventions to counter hydrogeological instability. On 29 July, less than two weeks after the report, the Dipartimento Casa Italia signed a framework agreement with the state's environmental engineering company, entrusting it with technical support for anti-hydrogeological instability interventions. Also present at the signing, at Palazzo Chigi, were ministers Pichetto Fratin and Musumeci: whether this agreement will help untangle that knot, or will simply add another layer to an already overly fragmented system, we will only discover with the next report.