Unequal protection and sacrificial territories: climate governance and infrastructural exposure in Southern Italy

This article examines the climate and energy transition in Southern Italy through the unequal territorial distribution of infrastructures, services, and adaptive capacities. Instead of treating climate vulnerability as a direct consequence of environmental exposure alone, the analysis explores how housing conditions, labour arrangements, water systems, and public infrastructures shape differentiated capacities to absorb climate and energy pressures. Drawing on a comparative analysis of spatial and socio-environmental indicators from ISTAT, ISPRA, ENEA, and Copernicus data, the article focuses on selected southern Italian cities in comparison with northern urban contexts. The findings show how heat stress, water insecurity, energy poverty, labour precarity, and infrastructural discontinuity overlap within territories characterised by weaker forms of institutional and infrastructural protection. The article argues that the climate and energy transition does not operate on territorially neutral ground. In Southern Italy, environmental pressures intersect with long-standing asymmetries in infrastructures, public services, and governance capacity, contributing to differentiated conditions of exposure and adaptation. Southern Italy offers a particularly significant case for understanding how contemporary climate transitions may produce forms of sacrificial territoriality within broader Mediterranean and European contexts.