WWF Italy is hailing a recent amendment to include the safeguarding of ecosystems and biodiversity in the Italian constitution as an “important first step” in harmonizing the country’s legal system with European and international environmental principles.
Minister of Ecological Transition Roberto Cingolani lauded the change in law as “epochal,” writes EuroNews.Green.
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“It is right that the protection of the environment, biodiversity, and ecosystems become a founding value of our Republic,” he said. ””It is an essential step for a country like Italy which is facing its own ecological transition.”
Cingolani praised Italy’s “well-defined” rules on Earth protections, noting that “by choosing to protect the environment, biodiversity, and ecosystems through your constitution, you are choosing to protect future generations.”
Such protections will involve some profound recalibrations in value systems that, so far, have favoured economic interest over environmental ones.
The amendment will require that “[public] health and the environment…be protected by the economy,” and that “private industry… no longer impact the climate,” EuroNews.Green says.
“Finally, environmental protection becomes a fundamental principle of the Republic to which future legislation will have to be inspired and to which past legislation will have to adapt,” Said WWF Italy President Donatella Bianchi.
