Environmentally Induced displacement: vulnerability and mobility in Southern Italy. The case of Sarno and Cerzeto

Environmental degradation can have severe consequences on the vailability of natural resources and can significantly affect security and increment vulnerability of human communities. It can also induce displacements in the aftermath of catastrophes and disasters. Since globalisation has been characterized by unequal economic development, so, environmental degradation, directly links with the economic growth and the industrialization jeopardising the lives of the most vulnerable people. For this reason one can recognise that the degradation of the environment is socially and spatially constructed. To support the thesis considering environmental degradation as a driver of mobility, we will provide an analysis of human displacements in Italy, in the two cases of Sarno (1998), and Cerzeto (2005), occurred in the aftermath of landslides. The decision to analyse this subject stands because there is a serious lack of either theoretical or empirical data on the relationship between environmental degradation, migration and related social vulnerabity especially in the Global North, and specifically in Italy. This knowledge gap represents a collective attempt to ignore the importance of the problem both in socio-economic and juridical perspective. This analysis performed in this paper aims at contributing to filling this gap by providing evidences of the environmental-mobility nexus.