Carlo Carraro, ed.
Series on “Environment and Development”
Published in Italian by il Mulino, 2009
pp. 528, € 39,00 978-88-15-12648-1

This book is the first attempt in Italy, and one of the few at the international level, to calculate the economic value of the likely future impacts of climate change on a national scale. While many are in fact the global economic assessments of the impacts of climate change, little is known of the economic value of these impacts at the level of individual nation and for Italy in particular. This book is the output of a research project in which the APAT (now ISPRA), the Euro-Mediterranean Center for Climate Change and the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei first analyze the economic impacts of climate change on coastal and alpine areas and on those at hydrological and desertification risk in Italy. The consequences of climate change are evaluated  for agriculture, tourism, transport and other economic sectors. Finally, the information collected is used to produce a first assessment of the macroeconomic implications of climate change for the Italian economy. The volume also estimates the impacts on human health and the cost of prevention policies with the aim to identify all the costs, including the costs of adaptation measures, that would be incurred as a result of climate change. The conclusions are not catastrophic, but they do draw attention to the policies which need to be adopted and to the considerable investments needed to cope with climate change and to make our economies less vulnerable.