The Ispra report captures the state of Italy's environment every year, confirming several trends, including poor air quality across northern Italy and the ongoing loss of soil and ecosystem services.
It is the season for end-of-year rankings — and for reports capturing the state of health of Italy's environment. One such report is the 14th edition of the "Rapporto sulla qualità dell'ambiente urbano" (Report on the quality of the urban environment), presented in Rome on 19 December and compiled by Ispra (Istituto superiore per la protezione e la ricerca ambientale), which in this edition includes more than 400 indicators and analyses the environment in 120 cities and 14 metropolitan areas. The findings of the Ispra report confirm numerous negative trends, but there is also good news, such as the growth of shared mobility — cycling specifically — and a significant downward trend in PM10 levels, particularly those directly emitted by domestic heating and transport, but also by industry and certain natural phenomena: a 19 per cent reduction over 10 years.
One need only look at the monitoring map, or glance at the real-time readings made available by the Lombardy environmental protection agency: air quality in northern Italy, and in the Po Valley in particular, remains very poor. According to estimates by the European Environment Agency, more than 60,000 people died prematurely in Italy in 2015 — deaths attributable to prolonged exposure to fine particulate matter, nitrogen oxides (NOx) and ozone.
According to the Ispra report, exceedances of PM10 limits in Italian cities continue. "Preliminary data updated to 10 December 2018," the researchers confirm, "show values above the legal threshold in 19 urban areas, with Brescia leading the exceedances (87) and Viterbo, at least so far, never having exceeded the limit." By the end of this year, 19 cities had exceeded the daily limit for PM10: after Brescia (although Ispra notes that the monitoring station is located in Rezzato and not in the city itself), come Turin and Lodi. In 2017, the annual limit value for NO2 was exceeded at least one monitoring station in 25 urban areas; more than 25 days of exceedance of the long-term target for ozone were recorded in 66 out of 91 urban areas; and the annual limit value for PM2.5 was exceeded in 13 out of 84 urban areas.
However, according to Ispra, the concentration trend for PM10, PM2.5 and NO2 is nonetheless declining, even though this does not change the fact that we are well above the limits considered safe by the World Health Organization. The main culprit, once again, is the transport sector, which alone accounts for 20 per cent of primary PM10 emissions — "a share
far from negligible," Ispra writes. "Moreover, it contributes substantially to nitrogen oxide emissions, accounting overall for 55 per cent of NOx emissions across the 120 cities examined."
While in the Sole24Ore ranking Milan appears among the top places for quality of life, in the Ispra report it comes first for soil consumption, taking into account the metropolitan city as a whole. In 2017, Naples and Milan recorded the highest percentage of consumed soil, at 34.2 per cent and 32.3 per cent respectively. On average, Italian municipalities consume around 650 hectares of land per year. This entails an overall cost, in terms of loss of key ecosystem services, estimated at between 215 and 270 million euros. The municipality of Rome alone, over the same period, loses a value of between 25 and 30 million euros.
While in Mantua the importance of urban forestry has been reaffirmed, the Ispra report shows that there is still much work to be done. The share of public green areas is low, with values below 4 per cent in 84 of the 116 cities for which data are available. Green space planning also remains very poor: just 10 municipalities have approved a "piano del verde" (green space plan). It is also worth noting that 2018 marks the creation of the first national register of monumental trees: in 60 of the 120 municipalities analysed, at least one monumental tree has been recorded, for a total of 413 entries. Across all metropolitan cities, 456 trees have been identified.