Dark Commerce by Louise I. Shelley

Author:Louise I. Shelley [Shelley, Louise I.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780691184296
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2018-11-13T05:00:00+00:00

DISPOSERS OF HAZARDOUS WASTE

Fifteen years ago, the dangerous disposal of waste by the Camorra in their home region near Naples resulted in dramatically increased incidences of cancer.134 Organized crime figures played an important role in this outcome. The criminal turncoat Carmine Schiavone, one of the leaders of the notorious Casalesi clan in Naples, told a closed parliamentary hearing in 1997 of this dangerous dumping. But organized crime has many accomplices. “In front of the committee he described dumping operations taking place in the dead of night, guarded by men in military uniforms and with the connivance of senior police officers, politicians and businesspeople that burned tons of hazardous waste.”135 In one year, 6,300 fires were set in the region, which was subsequently named the Terra dei Fuoci (Land of Fires).136 But the fires did not disappear after the revelations of the harm. In 2014, firefighters put out 2,400 blazes, and the European Court of Justice fined Italy 20 million euros for its failure to eliminate the dangerous disposal of hazardous waste.137

In the southern regions of Camorra domination, Campania and Caserta, there are subregions where illegal waste disposal has made the soil so toxic that spontaneous abortions and appreciably higher rates of child tumors (detected even in infants by age one) are serious problems.138 This is not just a localized problem. Italian criminal investigations revealed that the Camorra also exports toxic waste. Somalia, a former colony of Italy, was a key foreign victim—once again illustrating that history shapes the present.139

Other countries also dispose of hazardous waste in inappropriate ways. President Vladimir Putin, rarely a bearer of bad news, has said that in Russia 30 billion tons of waste is stored at unauthorized dump sites, a situation that could only arise in the presence of high-level corruption. “People are dumping waste where they see fit and how they see fit, and such [unauthorized] dump sites occupy 48 thousand hectares” of land across the country, he said, representing a loss of 6 percent of Russia’s GDP.140

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