In Italy where the pipeline will terminate, people are already feeling the impacts of climate change.
Olive growing and grape crops are down 50% due to the droughts and water shortages. One of Italy’s biggest rivers has run dry this year because the snow melt and glacial waters from the mountains just doesn’t exist. Rome’s famous water fountains had to be turned off due to serious water shortages after the driest spring season for 60 years.
Wildfires have being breaking out with increased frequency and intensity after temperatures topping 40oC have left the earth dry and scorched. And from one day to the next, a drought situation is followed by deadly flooding as months of rain are dropped and a ground baked solid by the sun.
But these aren’t the only impacts of such a project. At a local level the direct impacts of the construction and police violence needed to impose this on to the community are having equally telling effects. Italy prides itself on upholding democracy yet by ignoring 94 out of the 97 mayors in the region who are against the TAP project – including the mayor of Melengundo, who governs the region where the pipeline reaches land – the central government is imposing the project without hesitation.
The pipeline would land at the coastal towns of San Foca, with its beautiful clear waters, and Melendugno where the olive groves are hundreds of years old.
These are the place they want to risk?
Then they wonder why people fight side by side, from everywhere?!#NOTAP #italy #oneworld #together pic.twitter.com/UpJnu8dIfy— Federica (@Frockie) October 3, 2017
Local people have been fined up to €10,000 euros for participating in peaceful roadblocks, after their voices were ignored. Read more about the local resistance.
For more info on the Southern Gas Corridor (of which TAP is one section), see the interactive web documentary ‘Walking the Line’ by Counterbalance, Re:common and Platform London.