Italy

21ST CENTURY ITALY is a modern, industrialized nation with the seventh highest Gross Domestic Product in the world. Like other developed countries, Italy must struggle with high consumption of resources and the environmental effects of that consumption. The leading causes of greenhouse gas emissions in Italy are road transport and fossil-fuel burning energy production. Water pollution and desertification are environmental problems. Italy has been slow to confront these problems, but, beginning in 2006, has been able to see some positive outcomes as a result of new technologies and environmental policy changes.

Italy has the third highest rate of private car ownership in the world, and the low percentage of unleaded gasoline sold, a mere 18 percent, intensifies the emissions problem, as do the popular motor scooters. In the 1990s, Italy's industrial carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions gave the country the world's tenth highest level of industrial CO2 emissions. Between 1990, Italy's base year for greenhouse gas emission according to the Kyoto Protocol, and 2005, Italy's emissions rose annually. Methane emission is also a problem. Experts suggest that methane emissions have the potential to reach levels comparable to emissions from Italy's fossil fuel industry.

Italy's greenhouse gas emissions have risen 12 percent since 1990. Italy did achieve a 1.5 percent reduction in 2006, but emissions from electricity production rose 4 percent, and automobile emissions were stable. To reduce CO2 emissions, Italy has considered expanded rail systems, car-free Sundays, and a move [Page 562]from trucking to water transport, among other experiments, but local politics and contradictory opinions about what is best for the environment and the country's citizens make changes difficult.

The connection between the emissions problem and desertification is strong. The country's National Environmental Strategy for Sustainable Development (NESSD) included the reduction of greenhouse gases as the first item in its plans to protect and sustain natural resources. Some reports warn that climate change and its effects, such as declines in precipitation levels, could result in the desertification of as much as 32 percent of Italy's land area. In southern Italy, land that has been cultivated for millennia is being abandoned. Even flourishing businesses, such as the wine and olive industries, are suffering. In 2007, when Italy had its hottest summer in 250 years, the nation recorded its earliest harvest of wine grapes in 30 years, and production was down by over 10 percent. Olive production has been forced northward by the changes. Water levels in the Po River, which feeds irrigation channels in four Italian regions, have fallen 20–25 percent in the last 30 years. Researchers caution that average temperatures could increase by up to 9 degrees F (5 degrees C) by the end of the century.