A survey by Pool Ambiente based on Ania data highlights how environmental liability insurance policies remain poorly widespread.
Any business, even one that is fully compliant and has no intention of causing harm, can damage natural resources. A sheet of metal on an underground tank corroded by moisture, a fire in a warehouse, floodwaters from a flash flood reaching a storage facility and dispersing materials. And yet, in Italy, only 0.64 per cent of companies have protected themselves by taking out an environmental damage insurance policy. This is what emerges from the latest survey conducted by Pool Ambiente, the Consortium for the insurance and reinsurance of environmental damage liability, based on data from Ania (Associazione nazionale fra le imprese assicuratrici) and Istat (Istituto superiore di statistica).
In Italy, more than twenty insurance companies have included an environmental liability insurance policy in their offering. Among those offered by Pool Ambiente members, there are two types: the standard policy is aimed primarily at small and medium-sized enterprises, while the tailor made policy also includes consultancy services provided by specialist technicians. To put it simply: if a company is insured, it knows that a professional operator will step in to support it in repairing any damage and will cover the associated costs.
The 0.64 per cent of Italian companies holding such coverage is a step forward from the 0.45 per cent recorded in the previous survey, but it remains an extremely slim figure. It only increases in those sectors where such compliance is, more or less directly, required. In the waste sector, for example, the percentage reaches 21.16 per cent, because a regional law in Veneto requires companies to take out an environmental damage insurance policy and a surety bond. In the chemical sector, owing to stricter controls, it stands at 11.87 per cent: well above the average, but hardly satisfactory given the level of risk involved.
In geographical terms too, the spread of environmental damage insurance is patchy, with the highest figures in central and northern Italy (starting with Veneto at 1.85 per cent) and the lowest in the south and on the islands (the worst figure being Campania's 0.21 per cent).
But how often is a company held responsible for environmental damage? The Pool Ambiente report attempts to answer this question too, estimating that of the 1,000–1,500 new cases of damage to natural resources that occur each year in our country, approximately 700–1,200 are attributable to businesses. Excluding criminal conduct, 500–900 remain. We are therefore talking about compliant businesses that, without insurance cover, must bear the emergency and natural resource restoration costs entirely on their own — costs that can sometimes run into millions. Pool Ambiente estimates that, between 2006 and 2023, between 10,000 and 20,000 companies went bankrupt for this reason, with all the consequences that entails for workers and for the socio-economic fabric of their local area.
At that point, the contaminated site technically becomes orphaned, and the state must step in to carry out the remediation and restoration, drawing on national, European, regional and local funds — in any case, public money. Calculating the cumulative total of these expenditures is no easy task: Pool Ambiente, cross-referencing a range of sources, arrives at an estimated total of 4.5 billion euros for the period from 2006 to 2024. And it is certainly not a closed chapter, given the increasingly severe impacts of the climate crisis and ongoing contamination events (one need only think of Pfas). Every time taxpayers' money must make up for the absence of the party truly responsible for the damage, however, a fundamental principle of environmental law is undermined: the polluter pays.
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