Scholarly record

ENVIRONMENT AND WATER POLICIES IN THE ITALIAN SOUTH

M. G. Rienzo

Abstract

This paper focuses its attention on how, in a Southern Italian region like Puglia, the environment has been affected by infrastructural policies about the use of the water resource. The management and administration of the water resource and the rules about the use of public water and the pattern of socio-economic development were linked to the limited availability of this essential natural resource. The paper seeks to suggest that the use of water is dependent on peculiarities of social and cultural developme nt and, in this case, it shows that the water system has not prevented the emergence of a "spontaneous" system-approval. The area shared the principles of the protection of water resources and, at the same time, the idea that the development of the distribution networks of such a primary and inalienable good, like water, needed to be done carefully and with extreme care. The case of Puglia can be dealt with in this perspective: how projects and plans on the use of such an important natural resource shows that the effort applied on the transformation of the space resent of a sort of cultural iden Xtity, linked to the use of water.

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