La protezione dei migranti ambientali tra giudici e legislatore. Il caso italiano

According to recent figures, the Central Mediterranean route will be increasingly used by environmental migrants, that is to say victims of desertification and of the rise in temperature, primarily coming from the so-called Sahel belt. In the absence of an international regulation providing for common standards concerning the protection of this special category of migrants, their needs have been safeguarded in Italy by means of humanitarian protection: a tool that was included in the Consolidated Act on Immigration (Testo unico in materia di immigrazione), which allowed the issuing of a stay permit in the presence of “serious reasons, especially of humanitarian nature or resulting from constitutional or international duties of the Italian State”. This provision has been partially repealed by means of the Decree-Law no. 113/2018 (so-called decreto sicurezza); thus, today it is not possible anymore to obtain protection for solely humanitarian reasons; however, in the presence of (constitutional or international) duties to safeguard fundamental rights, the State is not allowed to deny protection. The mentioned Decree-Law, converted into Law no. 132/2018, has introduced in the Italian legal order a series of new stay permits, among which a stay permit “for disasters” («per calamità») has been provided; the wording of the concerned provision, however, shows many limits, that actually make this regulation only the surrogate for the ideal standard of protection of environmental migrants that many scholars have proposed in recent years. Notwithstanding this, it should be noted that the “decreto sicurezza” did not affect art. 20 of the Consolidated Act on Immigration, which allows the Government to grant temporary collective protection for “relevant humanitarian needs”: hence, it cannot be ruled out that the humanitarian protection could possibly “come back” through this channel, thus ensuring protection (also) of environmental migrants who would enter the territory of the Italian Republic.