Methodology

The study of environmental crime requires a multidisciplinary approach able to connect different subjects and thus to understand the reasons that caused the events. With the final goal of creating an exhaustive paper, the research is based on both first and secondary data, and it will use an inductive method for the analysis and discussion of the results.

The theories related to environmental crimes refers to concepts from the fields of green criminology (Ruggiero & South, 2013), political ecology and environmental governance, which are fundamental to understand how laws were created and what are the possible future scenarios, and are further explained in 1.3.

The study of environmental crimes requires an analysis of the topic of harmfulness and wrongfulness of crimes (Greenfield & Paoli, 2013; Rosenmerkel, 2001) and victimization (Skinnider, 2011), which are essential to create a conceptual ground to study the perception of the seriousness of environmental crimes (Adriaenssen et al., 2020; Shelley et al., 2011). The main theory on which the thesis is build is slo iolence , de eloped b Rob Ni on (2011) and its application from Davies (Davies, 2018; Davies, 2019; Nixon, 2011). These concepts are addressed in Chapters 4 and 5.

The framework used in the study includes environmental laws and legislation at Italian and European level.The legislative framework taken into consideration is related to the normative and the legislation from the European Union and from Italy, supported by studies about the legislations.

In particular, insights about the development of Italian legislation on environmental crimes (Covucci, 2019) and on waste are used (Agovino et al., 2016a; Agovino et al., 2016b; Agovino et al., 2018;

D'Amato et al., 2018; D Amato et al., 2015).

The second crucial theoretical topic of this project is the sociological understanding of how mafia-type organized crimes groups operate, especially the ecomafie. Hence, the studies of Sciarrone (Sciarrone, 1998; Sciarrone, 2002; Sciarrone & Storti, 2019) and Dalla Chiesa (Dalla Chiesa, 2016), among others, are the cardinal points to understand the modus operandi of the mafia organizations and the factors that allow their expansion in new territories. The theory and information about the eco-crime offences committed by mafia groups are thoughtfully described in the yearly reports about ecomafie, made by the environmental association Legambiente. The reports taken into account for this study are the ones from 2018 and 2019. Additional important literatures about ecomafie are from Germani & Reganati (Germani & Reganati, 2018; Germani et al., 2020) and Bonzanni (Bonzanni, 2019; Bonzanni, 2020).

Documents and report of the Italian Anti-mafia department of the Ministry of Justice (Direzione Investigativa Antimafia, DIA) provide the key guidelines to follow the development of the activity of ecomafie. Specifically, data recorded by Anti-Mafia Investigation District Office of Brescia (Direzione Distrettuale Antimafia, DDA) shows the outcome of the enforcement of the new legislation against environmental crime introduced in 2015, confirming a relevant number of cases of crimes against the environment in the province of Brescia.

The desk research is reinforced with the qualitative data, collected through an online survey with open-ended questions. The survey aims to study the awareness of environmental crime in Northern Italy and the awareness of the existence of slow violence processes. Because of Covid-19, it was

impossible to carry on face-to-face interviews, and reaching people to have online interviews would have been very complicated too. Thus, the idea of having a survey, created with written interviews with open-ended questions, seemed the most efficient and suitable way of collecting data. The method used for data collection is a hybridization between personal interviews and an online survey. It pro ides less personal to ch b the researcher as it lack of relations bet een inter ie er and inter ie ee (Bryman, 2016, p.658). The lack of direct relations between me and the interviewees was done with the aim to avoid possible bias. The risk of bias could have happened because of the method used to select the sample of the population, namely the snowball method, starting from my acquaintances. With the sno ball sample, the researcher makes initial contact with a small group of people ho are rele ant to the research topic and then ses these to establish contacts ith others (ibidem, p.202). The combination of the online survey and the snowball sample resulted to be an efficient way to collect the data for this research.

The survey was conducted via Nettskjema, from the 31.10.2020 until 18.11.2020. The sample of the population are those, older than 18 years old, living in the region of Lombardia, in the province of Brescia. The total number of the respondent is 86. Of those, 22 were chosen to be part of the analysis.

The process of data analysis followed three steps. First, I anonymized and translated the responses in order to improve the objectivity of the analysis, and I selected the ones that provide interesting insights on the topic. In fact, the main limitation of this method of collecting data can be found in the way people responded, with a risk of very short responses. Probably the same survey conducted in an oral way as a structured interview, could have avoid the risk of short responses. Then I narrowed the sample by choosing the ones from the province of Brescia, with some exceptions that included respondent from other areas that gave relevant opinions. The last step consisted of the analysis of the answers with the aim to find trends and pattern that could answer the research questions. The full text of the questionnaire and the responses chosen for the analysis are provided in the Appendix. The respondents ere anon mi ed sing the codes Respondent 1 , abbre iated as R1, R2 ( ) from no on.

The other limitations of the research are the difficult access to data, also compromised by the lack of updated material, especially from the institutions. For example, the last report of the Parliament Commission about the illegal waste trade in Lombardia was published in 2012, so we could assume that the scenario has slightly changed. Also, new judicial inquiries were carried on until the date, especially as a new Environmental Legislation was introduced in 2015. As explained by Legambiente, in 2019 the Covid pandemic made the collection of data from different institutions particularly challenging. Unfortunately, the pandemic did not stop the illegal waste trade nor other kind of environmental crimes (Legambiente, 2020a). For these reasons, the information and data

collected and taken into account are until 2019. The research will not conduct an environmental assets impact of the pollution in the area of the case study, but will address the official studies and statistics, provided by open-source databased of the main institutions, such as Institution of Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA) and the Regional Agency for Environmental Protection (ARPA).

The data collected are stored according to NMBU guidelines, all data has been processed anonymously. The research has been registered and approved by the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD).