How the mafia is setting up forest fires

cnn
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Thousands of forest fires tear through southern Italy Every year, fueled by scorching temperatures and the hot, dry Sirocco winds that sweep in from the Sahara. The climate crisis is pouring gasoline on these fires, but the mafia may be lighting the spark, according to new research.

While it’s hot, dry winds First the land for Italy’s ferocious fires, it is humans who start them. More than half are set intentionallyauthorities say, for reasons ranging from land compensation to personal vendettas.

As fires cluster in areas where mafia control is strong, there is greater scrutiny on these criminal groups.

The mafia is “arming” the region for control and financial gain, said UC Berkeley researcher Lauren Pearson. He spent months talking to prosecutors, police, environmental groups and locals in Sicily, where mafia groups are active.

The way Mafias operate, in the shadows and with high levels of control over communities, means that hard data linking them to the fires is devilishly difficult to pin down, Pearson told CNN. But evidence points to a clear connection between organized crime and wildfires, according to its recent study.

Southern Italy has always had forest fires, but recent summers have been devastating. Sicily endured more than 8,000 fires in 2021 as temperatures soared to 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

They were so severe that the Regional Anti-Mafia Commission carried out a investigation in the possible criminal causes behind them.

Finding perfect fire weather combined with inaccessible forested terrain helped set the stage for fast-moving, uncontrollable fires. But criminal activities “constitute the most dangerous factor,” that is report saying.

These criminal activities are not just mafia business, said Laura Biffi, who works for the nonprofit environmental organization Legambiente, which has been documenting the mafia’s ecological crimes for decades. Experts say there is a “firefighter industry” in southern Italy, he told CNN, because there are so many people involved.

Fires are set by seasonal workers eager to extend firefighting contracts, farmers wanting to clear the forest for grazing, protesters or people with vendettas.

But even when the mafia is not directly responsible, it is unimaginable that anyone would deliberately start a fire in territory controlled by the mafia without its permission, Biffi said.

In 2023, more than half of Italy’s nearly 3,700 fires occurred in Sicily, Puglia, Calabria and Campania, regions where southern Italy’s four main historic mafias have their roots, said Vincenzo Linarello, the founder of Goel, a network of influence of farmers who fight against crops.

The repeated fires in those areas are “an attack against the mafias or they are the perpetrators. It is a question of simple logic,” said Sergio Nazzaro, journalist and former spokesman for the president of the Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission.

The mafia’s use of arson tends to have two main objectives: power and profit.

Fire is money, Nazzaro told CNN. It creates an emergency that must be resolved and profits for the companies that enter. There are contracts for firefighting, cleanup operations and reconstruction. The mafia is a multi-layered criminal enterprise, he said, ranging “from the workforce that sets the fire to the concession to build on burned land.”

There is also evidence that mafia organizations may be using the fire to acquire land for solar and wind infrastructure deals, hoping to take advantage of clean energy transition funds, Pearson said.

One farmer, whose testimony appears in the Anti-Mafia Commission report, spoke of being approached by solar panel companies after his land had been burned.

There is a cruel irony at play, Pearson said. The mafia appears to be both weapons of climate change, which is Fight more destructive firesas well as trying to exploit the funds intended to address it.

The Italian mafia “are masters at figuring out how to illegally obtain new funds,” he said.

In addition to using fire for financial gain, experts say it also fits with the mob’s culture of violence. It’s a weapon of “intimidation and terror,” Pearson said, “a way of declaring that the land is still yours.”

Deliberate fire setting is very difficult to address. Proving that a fire was started by arson is easy and the motivation is often implicitly obvious, Nazzaro said. “The real problem is identifying the perpetrators and especially the directors.”

There is currently no “concrete evidence” of mafia involvement in Fires, said Andrea Zoppi, deputy prosecutor at the Palermo prosecutors’ office in Sicily. Although there is evidence that wildfires often lead to land speculation, he told CNN.

Italy has a series of laws designed to discourage arson by encouraging grazing or development for several years after the land has burned. But these laws can be difficult to implement, Pearson said, requiring a lot of tracking and monitoring.

Pietro Ciulla, World Wildlife Fund’s Italian delegate for Sicily, says the big problem in parts of Italy is a lack of strategy to counter fires, with resources spent on fighting fires, but not on working out how to prevent them and reinforce the land. This is likely to make it “easier for the mafia to infiltrate and do business,” he told CNN.

As the planet warms, the mafia may find it easier to use fire for its purposes, Pearson said. “There is a weapon of climate change.”