Thousands of wildfires tear through southern Italy every year, fueled by scorching temperatures and the hot, dry, sirocco winds that sweep in from the Sahara. The climate crisis is pouring gasoline on these blazes, but the Mafia may be lighting the spark, according to new research.
The Mafia is "weaponizing" fire in the region for control and financial gain, said UC Berkeley researcher Lauren Pearson. She spent months speaking to prosecutors, the police, environmental groups and locals in Sicily, where Mafia groups are active.
The way Mafias operate — in the shadows and with high levels of control over communities — means hard data linking them to fires is fiendishly hard to pin down, Pearson told CNN. But evidence points to a clear connection between organized crime and wildfires, according to her recent study.
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London’s £41m funding boost for a Thames-side heat network underlines a critical shift in sustainable construction: decarbonising the built environment now depends on infrastructure that addresses whole life carbon, operational energy and life cycle cost together. Capturing industrial waste heat to supply up to 650,000 homes supports net zero carbon buildings, energy-efficient buildings and sustainable urban development at district scale. With UK energy bills rising, waste heat recovery is becoming a core test of environmental sustainability in construction, not a niche retrofit measure.
Proposed data centres in the East of England have intensified scrutiny of the carbon footprint of construction and long-term building lifecycle performance. Campaigners claim annual emissions could exceed those of Luton Airport, raising urgent questions over power demand, heat reuse, embodied carbon in materials and the environmental impact of construction. Planning authorities will need stronger whole life carbon assessment requirements to determine whether such schemes can align with net zero whole life carbon, low carbon design and credible sustainable building practices.
A UN-backed taskforce seeking to unlock climate adaptation finance reinforces the need for sustainable building design, eco-design for buildings and life cycle thinking in construction. Flood resilience, passive cooling, water management and heat-safe public space are becoming baseline requirements for green infrastructure and low carbon building delivery. The sector’s next phase must move beyond certification alone, including BREEAM and BREEAM v7, towards lifecycle assessment, circular economy in construction, low embodied carbon materials, environmental product declarations (EPDs), sustainable material specification and end-of-life reuse in construction.
António Guterres’ warning that fossil-fuel expansion “defies science, economics and common sense” sharpens pressure on developers, designers and supply chains still reliant on carbon-intensive heat, logistics and materials. Green construction, eco-friendly construction and carbon neutral construction will depend on low carbon construction materials, renewable building materials, circular construction strategies and resource efficiency in construction. The industry’s priority is clear: deliver buildings and infrastructure that waste less energy, reduce embodied carbon, withstand climate risk and avoid outsourcing emissions beyond the site boundary.
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