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In the fields north of Naples, decades of illegally dumped toxic waste have left poisoned soil, deformed livestock and cancer clusters. In April 2025, the European Court of Human Rights gave Italy two years to clean it up. This is how the ecomafia built a wasteland, and how citizens forced the state to answer for it.
Act 1: A Toxic Wasteland
The land of Fires (Terra dei Fuochi) is not a new Mad Max sequel, but rather a region near Naples ravaged by decades of ecomafia activity. Since 1980s, hazardous waste has been illegally incinerated, dumped and buried underground here, with toxic garbage quietly disappearing into its fields. Authorities became aware of the problem as early as 1988, yet no serious clean-up was ever undertaken. A few small measures were taken along the way, but they were little more than band-aids on deep wounds. Today, the region still carries some of Italy’s highest rates of cancer, foetal malformation, and epigenetic disruption.
This decades-long poisoning was made possible by green corruption and a highly organised ecomafia.
Ecomafia is a term coined in 194 by the Italian NGO Legambiente to describe environmental crimes committed by organised crime groups, such as illegal waste trafficking and disposal, unlawful construction, and illegal excavation. A distinction is worth drawing a distinction here. Organised crime refers broadly to any group carrying out coordinated illegal activities, whether at national or international level. Mafia goes further: these are organised crime groups deeply embedded in a territory, commanding social consensus and enforcing a powerful code of silence, omertà. For now, the ecomafia is currently a phenomenon known mainly in Italy, but without robust criminal law enforcement across the continent, it risks becoming a Europe-wide reality.
Act 2: Repentance
By 2008, the walls were closing in on Gaetano Vassallo, the owner of a waste disposal company who had spent more than twenty years enabling illegal dumping under the protection of the Casalesi clan. He turned State’s witness that year and, in 2010, was sentenced to prison for waste trafficking and mafia association.
Asked how illegal dumping on such a scale had been possible for so long, Vassallo was blunt: the system worked by corrupting everyone at every level, from politicians to technical experts to local administrators. He said the family always pays, and that nobody ever refused the money. Threats were rarely necessary; being known associates of the bosses was enough to inspire fear on its own. For many officials, it was simply convenient, And landowners who sold their fields took the payments without objection. The network, Vassallo explained, also extended even into freemasonry, which provided access to useful contacts for a fee. One key tactic was document falsification, which made illegal waste look legal in transit.
Vassallo’s account laid bare something important: the relationship between the ecomafia and corruption is not incidental but structural. Criminal organisations involved in environmental crime survive and thrive through webs of collusion spanning the private sector, public administration, and local government. Legambiente’s annual Ecomafia Reports consistently show how corruption is the primary glue binding mafia interests to legitimate economic activity in waste management, public procurement, environmental permitting, and infrastructure. In its 2025 report, Legambiente recorded 88 investigations into environmental corruption, underscoring how these practices allow criminal networks to infiltrate regulatory and decision-making processes.
Act 3: The Court is now in session
On 30 April 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued its judgement in Cannavacciuolo v. Italy, ordering the Italian state to resolve the situation within two years. The case, brought by a coalition of organisations, carries the name of Alessandro Cannavacciuolo. Alessandro grew up in Acerra, in the heart of the Land of Fires, where his father and uncle once raised sheep for a living. When their flock began giving birth to deformed lambs, the two men realised something was wrong. They gathered evidence and reported the criminals and businessmen who had been dumping toxic waste on their land for years. Alessandro was still a child, but he remembers with vivid clarity the gunshots, the cars set on fire and the slaughtered sheep left as intimidation. His uncle would later be diagnosed with cancer, one of many families in Acerra touched by the same illness. Rather than look away, Alessandro chose to speak up, even as a teenager, denouncing the polluters and organised crime networks that had turned his community into a dumping ground.
The Court examined in detail the public health consequences of decades of illegal dumping. A study commissioned by the Italian Senate in 2013 documented links between environmental pollution in the area and elevated rates of cancer, foetal and neonatal malformations, and epigenetic changes, while the Cannavacciuolo family themselves had observed birth defects in their farm animals. None of this is surprising: decomposing waste produces leachate, a toxic liquid that seeps into soil and groundwater. Recent studies have identified a range of dangerous chemicals contaminating the area, including arsenic, mercury, and lead. Italy’s Superior Institute for Health (ISS) identified 2,767 illegal landfills across 38 of the 90 municipalities in the two affected provinces, with 37% of residents living within 100 metres of one. This is not just an ‘environmental problem’, but a social and public health crisis.
The ECtHR acknowledged these threats and called for a full clean-up of the area within two years. Crucially, it also underlined the central role of civil society in what comes next: it was civil society organisations that brought the case, built the evidentiary record through direct experience, and demanded accountability. The Court’s ruling requires the Italian state to consult “every relevant local, regional, and/or national stakeholder”, to establish an independent monitoring mechanism with meaningful civil society participation, and to keep citizens informed throughout the process.
Act 4: First Steps in Extinguishing the Flames
The Italian government moved quickly, if indecisively. In February 2025, the Council of Ministers established a National Commissioner for the Land of Fires situation, appointing General Giuseppe Vadalà to the role. The Commissioner must submit regular progress reports to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, providing a degree of institutional accountability. The government also enacted Decree-Law No. 116/2025, tightening the criminal law framework around environmental crime with heavier penalties for illegal waste trafficking and abandonment, the suspension of business licences, and the exclusion of non-compliant companies from the national environmental register. On the clean-up itself, however, too little is being done relative to the scale of contaminated land. So far, only one of the region’s most notorious toxic sites, Resit, has been fully secured, along with the nearby “Vast Area of Giugliano” once controlled by the Vassallo family.
To be continued…
Italian civil society has been essential to this entire story. Every year since 1994, Legambiente has worked alongside the Guardia di Finanza (Italy’s financial and economic crime police), the Carabinieri’s NOE unit (the Operative Ecological Group), prosecutors, and the DIA (the Investigative Anti-Mafia Directorate) to produce the annual Ecomafia Report. The report tracks illegal activity year on year, giving both institutions and civil society the data they need to understand and respond to a phenomenon that, as this story makes clear, has real victims.
This formalised, institutionalised reporting mechanism built on genuine knowledge-sharing between State actors and civil society is an Italian model worth watching and worth replicating if it delivers real change. The Italian state now has less than a year left to clean up;
We’ll be watching.