Yet another crisis...

These days a lot of resonance is being given to the problem related to the garbage crisis in Naples. First of all, let me tell you that Naples is the second city I always recommend to visit in Italy when asked (the first one being Rome), so when I think of the negative image many foreigners are receiving , this makes me particularly angry. Where does the problem come from? How can such a beautiful city be devastated by such a plague?

From what I heard and read so far, the very likely explanations for the phenomenon are a mix of everything: bad politics, criminal interests, economic connivance....

Bad politics is a recurrent phenomenon behind many crisis. Why it is a problem afflicting Southern Italy and many other countries may be a forthcoming post. In the meanwhile, I cannot track precisely the origin of the garbage phenomenon but I can recall hearing about it for the first time more than 10 years ago. The solution always adopted to tackle the "emergency" has been either finding a new landfill, or sending the "excess" garbage to Germany or Romania. These solutions, temporary and partial, have been favorably regarded by politicians. This short-sightedness of course paved the way to new, subsequent crisis later, with always the same kind of problems annexed: garbage burnt on the streets-cum- dioxine emitted at intolerable level, plus citizens' protests. An increasing number of people living in the areas affected by the problem has started dying of cancer (dioxine was the cause), way more than the national average, but no reasonable answer came from the public authorities. Ex- post, it seems like they thought the situation would stabilize one day, by a miracle of St. Gennaro, Naples' patron saint...

You may wonder, how come such inaction? Here comes the second major problem, criminal interests. As it is very neatly described in the book Gomorrah, a worldwide bestseller, the organized crime has found it profitable to displace illegally the garbage. Any kind of waste, from urban to special toxic, is introduced overnight into illegal landfills (those without the necessary authorization) for a very reasonable price .
Of course everything is done secretely. The whole affair has emerged when some peasants started to observe their sheep dying. After investigation, it emerged that under their camps toxic material had been accumulated, so their lands were confiscated.

Today many politicians are arguing that the problem of Naples is an Italian problem because many entrepreneurs from the north have taken advantage of this system with benevolent ignorance. While the premises are right (this is indeed an Italian problem), the argument is wrong, because it confuses the cause with the effect. There is economic connivance from the North just because a very lousy political apparatus in the south has allowed the organized crime to set up such a flourishing business. In economics, profits drive entrepreneurs, but rule of law sets the boundaries for economic activity to be prosperous for society. There is nothing to blame here (certainly not Capitalism), except simply a very very incompetent generation of politicians.

Garbage is indeed a business. It could be a legal and rewarding one, if the share of recycling were increased. There is a little town near Salerno (in the same region of Naples, Campania), Mercato San Severino, where a special system of garbage collection has been adopted: the garbage is not collected from the streets, but door-to-door, and a pecuniary premium on the share of recycling reached by year is assigned per family, an amount which is deducted from the bills. This is a simple system which produced up to 65% of recycling. This is an example of how the system can be run efficiently if long run strategies are adopted. From what I am able to read in the newspapers, the solutions the government plans to adopt are not so encouraging, but given the state of emergency, one cannot really expect more to be done.

Of course the answer to this problem, given its magnitude and the stakes involved, may only come from the central authority. I conclude with one simple message. If somebody is wondering whether a federalist system would be better for Italy, as many argue today, I will give this example as supreme evidence of what could be the unintended consequences of decentralizing authority in systems where the periphery is lacking enough political accountability.