Just days before the referendum on drilling on Sunday 17 April, the outcome is still open. The president of Legambiente invites us to reflect on the reasons for voting yes.
The referendum vote of 17 April is fast approaching, and in recent days the debate between supporters of no and supporters of yes has intensified. The latter would like to see the repeal of the provision, introduced with the 2016 Stability Law, that grants oil companies concessions to extract gas and oil from our seabed within the 12-mile limit until a deposit is exhausted — with no time limit whatsoever. In recent days it has become increasingly clear that this is a clash between two ways of viewing the Italian economic system: one tied to the old industrialism represented by a strong concentration of corporate power, typical of the Mattei era, when what was good for Eni was good for Italy. The other, by contrast, proposes a model of economic production and wealth that is transparent, distributed, diversified and integrated with the local territory.
Oil is the symbol and the fuel of the economic model born and flourished in the second half of the twentieth century, an irreplaceable pillar of the industrialisation processes that swept first the West, then other parts of the world. The fuel of a model that created wealth founded on the indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources, historically accompanied by an endless list of environmental crises and social conflicts. And by a widespread system of illegality on a global scale, involving a flood of environmental and fiscal offences, generally of a corrupt and fraudulent nature. Rather than democracies, oil has sustained and nourished pale imitations of them — more or less presentable ones. Taking a quick look at just the main scandals in the sector over the past two and a half years, in Italy at least 97 people have been under investigation (in some cases already convicted) for environmental and health offences, and 92 for crimes related to corruption, fraud and tax evasion, for a total of 189 individuals including senior company executives, managers, public officials and local dignitaries. According to Transparency International, at the international level the oil and gas extraction sector is by far among the most at risk of corruption, with a perceived corruption rate of 25 per cent. For the non-governmental organisation Global Witness, drawing on data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Ocse) from December 2014, oil, gas and mineral resources still constitute the world's highest-risk sectors for corruption. Out of a sample of 427 corruption cases recorded between 1999 and 2014, those involving the aforementioned sectors alone would account for 19 per cent of the total.
The high propensity for corruption in the gas and hydrocarbon extraction sector is due primarily to the very disproportion between the contractual and economic power deployed by the individual economic operators who own and/or manage the facilities, and the political and economic weakness of the territories where the extraction platforms are actually located. Italy, too, has seen a number of corruption investigations and/or widespread illegalities in the management of extraction, refining and crude oil storage platforms take place on its soil. In recent decades, judicial proceedings have multiplied, all sharing the difficulty faced by prosecutors in sustaining charges for environmental crimes in the courtroom — both because of the inadequacy of the legislation (at least until the recent passage of Law 68/2015 on so-called environmental offences, which introduced six environmental felonies into the criminal code, along with a lengthy list of aggravating circumstances) and because of the disproportion of forces within the courtroom itself: on one side, leading lawyers and tireless experts producing studies and scientific research in support of wealthy defendants; on the other, poorly supported and demoralised expert witnesses, often forced to advance the costs of the complex investigative work themselves. And where the inadequacy of the law and the disproportion of forces at play have not sufficed, the statute of limitations has stepped in to ensure impunity for the worst environmental crimes, sweeping away every last glimmer of environmental justice.
In a few days' time the vote will take place, and beyond the media obstructionism and the scandals surrounding the Tempa Rossa amendment affair — which have laid bare the system of corruption bound up with the world of oil — what is emerging is an extraordinary popular mobilisation seeking to cut through the misinformation and explain that this is not a pointless referendum. People are voting to call loudly for a different future. Taking part in the referendum does not simply mean wanting to set a limit on the duration of oil and gas exploration and extraction concessions within the 12-mile limit: it means indicating what future we want for the citizens and territories of this country; it means pushing towards a clean economic model, free from the illegality, the risks and the pollution that characterise the oil supply chain. That is why we invite all citizens to go and vote, and to vote yes. So that our country may decisively take the path that will lead us away from the old fossil fuels, innovating our productive system, consistently combating pollution and the Earth's fever, and honouring the commitments the Italian government made at COP 21 in Paris at the end of 2015.