A-Infos (en) Sicilia Libertaria 2-24: AGAINST THE STATE MANAGEMENT OF THE TERRITORY FOR A NATURALIZATION MANAGED FROM THE BOTTOM (ca, de, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

Last January 16, Von der Leyen, on a pre-election trip to Romagna 
together with Meloni, promised the arrival of funds from the Pnrr for 
1.2 billion, in addition to the 1.6 billion already allocated for 
"public reconstruction" of the damage caused by the floods of May 16th 
and 18th in Emilia Romagna. Also in this case, as with every flood or 
other hydrogeological disaster, the need for land management is 
flaunted; but interventions regularly take place according to the new 
paradigm of restoring collapsed places and structures to their pre-event 
state, and compensating for damages. This logic is insane for rational 
land management and we will see why; it can only be understood with 
neoliberal politics, with the parameters of profit.

Generally, the responsibility for these floods is attributed to the 
changed climatic conditions which produce extreme events with much 
closer frequencies than in the past (they have been classified from 
secular to ten-yearly), but the causes of the floods (hydraulic risk) 
are not only attributable to atmospheric events. The risk of floods 
occurring in a given territory is the product not only of the danger of 
the event but also of the vulnerability of the territory and its 
exposure, i.e. the quantity and type of "protection" structures present 
and how much urbanization there is in this same territory. It is clear 
that restoring the pre-disaster status of only the "protection" factor 
of hydraulic risk is foolish; it means not reducing the risk.

This policy is the result of a reductive perspective, of a vision that 
has persisted for about two centuries, since the State, basing itself on 
the "new hydraulic science", which - like the "new forestry science", 
which has supplanted the old natural forests with mono-cultural forests, 
planted geometrically and aligned to the "Prussian" style - began to 
reshape and "channel" the riverbeds, considering them in their 
functionalist essence of containing a flow within a section; thus, with 
"scientific calculation of the flood flow sections" the new embankments 
are designed with works that contain the flood runoff, and "free" the 
flood plains for urban, infrastructural expansion and for industrialized 
or so-called "agriculture" rational"; that is, the functional purpose of 
this perspective becomes this: what used to be the "river appurtenances" 
are privatized. And these are almost exclusively the areas where the 
effects of climate change cause disasters, these or the inhabited 
centers built close to them or with infrastructures that interfere with 
the watercourse.

This reductionist vision presupposed, in the logic of "ultramodern" 
models, a control and management apparatus for these artefacts, and 
their constant adaptation. But already from the 70s/80s of the last 
century this model could no longer guarantee the functionality of the 
entire hydraulic system, since the strong urbanization with the 
consequent waterproofing of new lands had accelerated the water 
outflows, modifying the dynamics of the flood peaks, compared to those 
used for the design of rigid and fixed hydraulic works and also reduced 
by structural interference from urbanisations. With the establishment of 
the Basin Authorities, these problems begin to be addressed, always with 
the same science and the same models, trying, through the Basin Plans, 
to adapt the hydraulic structures to the new conditions, replacing, in 
many cases where the works were insufficient, with adjustments or new 
expansion tanks. But the prepared intervention programs are only 
partially implemented. In the meantime, new political-economic 
strategies are emerging, which require a reduction in public 
interventions, especially the reduction of personnel employed in control 
and management. We enter the so-called climate of austerity and savings 
of neoliberal policies.

Policies which in this area were gradually implemented with the 
subtraction of planned funding and which were formalized with the 
legislative decree of 23 February 2010, n. 49, which provides for the 
new "flood risk management plans". These should be integrated with the 
old plans of the basin authorities, but the prevention aspects, as well 
as those of management and adaptation of the hydraulic or lamination 
works, are placed in the alternative; the plans focus on the prediction 
of events and on weather lodging systems, establishing the function of 
these as mere civil protection plans. The problems of soil protection 
are addressed only from an emergency perspective.

The hydraulic risk is no longer addressed with interventions to 
reorganize the watercourses, which, reduced to canals, have an 
insufficient bed to contain the floods, but with civil protection tools, 
i.e. with the evacuation of the population residing in the areas of 
possible flooding. Flooding is therefore occurring more and more, 
causing damage and often even deaths.

These "inconsistencies" of statist land management are an aspect of the 
more general unsustainability of the state-capitalist system with 
respect to life and nature. We need to start thinking and planning 
bottom-up, self-managed management of the territory. And in the river 
sector we must resume the logic of "river redevelopment" to restore to 
the dynamics of the riverbeds and their natural appurtenances all that 
land that the state and capitalist logic has taken away from it. That 
is, restoring that principle of inalienability, of non-availability to 
private property. That is, it is necessary to ensure that even in these 
areas the interaction of the uses that communities can make are 
disconnected from the logic of emergency policies followed by 
ultra-modern ones, both founded on a merely conflictual and predatory 
relationship, the result of the logic of exploitation and of abuse also 
on the environment.

Vincenzo Talerico

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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