Which economic sectors will be hit hardest?
With the increase in hydrogeological risk, which will cause landslides and floods, infrastructure, homes and commercial activities will be severely damaged. The damage is estimated at between 1.5 and 15.2 billion euros per year in the period 2071–2100.
Let us move on to agriculture, noting of course that all these sector-by-sector views must in fact be integrated and considered in a single context with strong interconnections.
If the temperature rises by 2°C and 4°C, the total value of lost agricultural production is estimated at between 13 and 30 billion euros in the first and second case respectively. Relative to the total absolute value of Italian agriculture, this corresponds to a loss of around 5%.
One sector that will be particularly hard hit is tourism, which today accounts for 7% of Italian GDP. Here, rising temperatures and other negative events could lead many tourists, especially foreign ones, to stop visiting our country.
Winter tourism, moreover, would be severely affected by rising temperatures. The lack of snow would force an increase in artificial snow production, with serious problems of competition with other sectors for the use of water.
To give an example, the ski resorts of Friuli-Venezia Giulia would not have enough natural snow cover to guarantee the season with a temperature increase of just +1°C. About a third of the resorts in Lombardy, Trentino and Piedmont would suffer the same fate.
In the extreme scenario of +4°C, no more than 18% of all the resorts in the Italian Alps would have natural snow cover suitable for winter activities.
These are only some of the economic damages that can reasonably be foreseen for our country in the climate change scenario. To them we could add the increase in energy consumption for air conditioning in our homes and offices, the decline of the fishing sector, which still employs many Italians, and more besides.
We can therefore adopt the conclusions of the aforementioned 2020 CMCC report as our own:
“Investing in sustainable development, which the European Green Deal recognises as the only development model for the future, is an opportunity that Italy cannot miss or even postpone. The challenge is to use the available economic resources with competence and innovation, through new models of production and business and new approaches geared towards sustainable management
of the territory, which must necessarily become part of the toolkit of businesses and public bodies, both local and national.”
