12 - The National and Local Dimension of the Italian Civil Protection System: Evolution and Implementation of Disaster Risk Reduction Policies

Summary

Introduction

The Italian Civil Protection is part of the EU Civil Protection system and operates in a range of emergency scenarios within and outside the national territory. The system's organization and efficiency for centralized disaster response are not counterbalanced by an equally strong and systematic action in disaster risk awareness, mitigation and preparedness at the local scale. Only recently this trend is being slowly reversed, with the implementation of norms that maximize the involvement and responsibility of local actors in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Disaster Risk Management (DRM) action.

Italy has a track record of disasters, as well as norms regulating the consequent aid delivery, with the first laws on the subject emanated by the Italian Kingdom and dating back to the 19th century. Over the 1900s, the socio-political transformations of the country reverberated in character and content of body of norms on emergency management, whereas the need for an organic and coherent system for disaster response culminated in the institution of the National Civil Protection Service (Bignami, 2010). Over the last century, major changes in emergency legislation were undertaken in response to disastrous events (Table 12.1), with extraordinary measures retaining the character of una-tantum aid delivery to the affected populations (Allegretti, 2017).

The normative turns of the first half of the 20th century, in favour of centralization and militarization of emergency relief, marked the disconnect between aiders and aided, and can be looked at as the seed of the public disengagement in disaster risk mitigation and response, increasingly recorded over the following decades. Even after the demilitarization of the National Civil Protection in 1992, and the consequent incentives to citizens’ participation, the problem persisted as shown by the gap between risk perception and action of citizens, and civil protection authorities (Crescimbene et al, 2015; Avvisati et al, 2019) – a divide that the most recent norms, such as the Decree emanated in 2018 introducing participatory action in the Civil protection code, attempt to fill (D.L. 1/2018, Articles 4/c; 18/2; 31– 42).