Ssatisfy current generations without compromising resources for future ones. It is not surprising that the idea of sustainable development emerged from a woman, the former Norwegian minister Gro Harlem Brundtlanddoctor and environmentalist, who used it for the first time in the report Our Common Future, published by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987. The very feminine desire to safeguard the life and health of children current and future has always been intertwined with environmentalist demands.
Defending the environment means protecting life, not just human life
The Eighties and Nineties were a very fertile period for militants and defending the environment became fundamental, even in Italy. Like a tree with deep roots, the middle generation draws on the experience of the previous ones. «Modern environmentalism was born with Rachel Carson, in 1962» specifies Danilo Selvaggi, director of Lipu and scholar of the phenomenon. «It was after the Second World War that we witnessed the advance of the ecological crisis, with the great smog in London in 1952 which killed thousands of people, the Minamata syndrome in 1956, due to mercury poisoning, the DDT contamination in agriculture» . They are sensational phenomena, which frighten and strike the collective imagination. And they join the fears related to nuclear power, which emerged after Nagasaki and Hiroshima. «In the fifties and sixties we see a strong female mobilization against the atomic bomb and in favor of pacifism” explains Gabriella Corona, research director of the Cnr, environmental historian and author of the book The Italy of the Anthropocenecoming out of Carocci.
Women against the atomic bomb
«The specter of pollution due to the atom then brings 20 thousand people to Italy to Montalto di Castro, in the Viterbo area, where a new power plant was planned. It is March 20, 1977 and this is the first major anti-nuclear demonstration in Italy. After the accident at the Three Miles Island power plant in the USA in 1979 a coordination of women against nuclear energy is formed» Corona points out. “It is women’s bodies that are most affected by the effects of radiation.” And the link between women and climate disaster is demonstrated by the Icmesa event in Seveso in 1976, where the leakage of a cloud of dioxin from the plant contaminated the air, forcing the inhabitants of a part of Brianza to leave their homes, sometimes forever, it marked the faces of the inhabitants with devastating acne and pushed many women to abort. It seemed like a distressing science fiction film, but instead it was reality.
Youth protest at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. (Photo by Antonio RIBEIRO/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
Chernobyl and the abandonment of nuclear power
The Ministry of the Environment was born in 1983, which seems to promise a future of greater protection for nature and the health of citizens, which are so closely connected. It will be enough to resort to the law to protect the environment. I was convinced of this too, since in the mid-eighties I was twenty years old, I was a WWF activist and in addition to books on pandas I carried my copy of In the name of the polluted people by magistrate Gianfranco Amendola, our Bible to protest against illegal landfills and pollution. It was 1986 when, after the accident at the Chernobyl power plant, at the time in the Soviet Union, the wind carries the radioactive cloud to Italy too and for months milk and salads disappear from our table. From a topic relegated to environmentalists, the use of the atom becomes a macroscopic problem before everyone’s eyes. The 1987 nuclear referendums, which involved many twenty-year-olds of the time in collecting signatures, are a milestone in the history of Italian environmentalism, putting a stop to the construction of new power plants. In that same year, the Montreal Protocol achieved one of the greatest successes in environmental protection at an international level: the banning of chlorocarbons (CFCs), responsible for the ozone hole. In the wake of these results, the Greens are presenting themselves for the first time in political elections in Italy as an environmentalist and pacifist group.
Women’s march against the atomic bomb and to defend the environment sponsored by English and American women’s organizations.
Defending the environment for a more aware world
«In the 1990s environmentalism entered a new phase. Organizations become institutionalized, the pure movement ends” comments Selvaggi. His considerations are intertwined with personal memories. «At university I discovered the existence of Philosophy that dealt with Ecology, and I started reading books that influenced my way of thinking: in addition to the aforementioned Silent spring by Rachel Carson, Physics. Inhabiting the Earth of a group of scientists and philosophers The historical roots of the ecological crisis by Lynn White. I also attended Greenpeace banquets dealing with the referendums on nuclear power and hunting.” These are the first steps that will lead Selvaggi from a militant environmentalism, from a volunteer, to dedicate himself full time to the protection of birds and the environmentfor thirty years now.
1992 is a year that gives hope
For the first time, heads of state are meeting to discuss the environment and climate change. «The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro marks the globalization of ecological issues» comments Selvaggi. The solution seems within reach: with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the world seems to be moving towards widespread well-being and, after Rio, towards institutional attention to the environment. But the flip side of globalization is the surge in consumption and a constant growth in greenhouse gases. Before Greta, the then twelve year old Cullis Severn-Suzuki, among the last born of generation You can’t bring back the forests where the desert is now. If you can’t fix the world, please stop destroying it.” The international conferences on climate change will try, starting a long series of COPs: the first was held in Berlin in 1995, the next one – the 28th – will be in Dubai. In 1997, in Kyoto COP 3 adopted a protocol for the reduction of climate-changing emissions: a pity, however, that it would only come into force in 2005. Despite good will and many discussions, CO2 continues to increase.
A planetary movement
Alessandra Prampoliniborn in 1982, is a Millennial. She is the first female director general of the WWF. «My family gave me a love for nature, as a child I spent three months a year in the mountains in Abruzzo where I learned to observe and not be afraid of animals» she says. «At university I would have liked to study ethology, but in Rome it wasn’t possible. I therefore enrolled in Economics, focusing on sustainable development and the use of resources.” It is 2001, the year of the G8 in Genoa. «The theme of environmental justice is linked to the fight against the financial giants, to the International Monetary Fund, to the liberal economy that causes great international inequalities” says Gabriella Corona. Environmental issues end up going hand in hand with the No Global movement. Alessandra Prampolini also recalls how many young environmentalists in that period were close to the issues of land rights and the fight against land grabbing, the hoarding of vast plots of land by multinationals, not just Western ones.
Alessandra Prampolini, the first female director general of the WWF to defend the environment
No logo, the cult book of a generation
«An important book in my education? No logo by Naomi Klein, who it helped me understand the role of multinationals and unbridled consumerism». Prampolini started as a volunteer at the WWF, where she joined the staff for five years, and later she changed jobs, returning to the WWF in 2018. «But the relationship also had a significant impact The limits to growth, published by the Club of Rome in 1972″ recalls Prampolini. «After 2001, a key year is 2008. With the financial market crisis we have returned to talking about how much the economy was linked to the circulation of material goods, land, resources and the food supply chain. The topic of climate has also resurfaced: People realized how much the consequences of the climate crisis were impacting their daily lives. And on the subject of work, it has generated a reflection on the logic of the market and on the existing sense of insecurity.” A turning point, according to Prampolini, is the next one COP 15 held in 2009 in Copenhagen which lays the foundations for the 2015 Paris Agreement, also supported by the environmental movement. The key decision was to limit the increase in global average temperature at 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels, a goal that today appears increasingly difficult to meet.
Integral ecology
While little by little the COPs become a “blah blah blah” to use the words of Greta Thunberg, since 2018 Generation Z, that of guys from Fridays for Future, he’s starting to make his voice heard. Three years earlier, a less young but high-ranking environmentalist had spoken of him with the encyclical Laudato Si’, highlighting the urgent need for an integral ecology. The sequel is already today.
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