The Paduli used to be a dense forest of oak trees, the Belvedere wood, which were cut down in the 19th century to make room for olive trees. Because of its fertile soil and abundance of water, over the years the Paduli became a sort of “farmed forest” that was supposed to be especially beautiful and magical.
The Cerano coal power plant of Cerano, near Brindisi, releases into the sea billions tons of hot water every year, and is also responsible for about one third of Italy’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Civil protection volunteers delivering water and fresh produce to elderly people on August 13, 2021 in Lecce, Italy. A heat wave carried by the anticyclone named “Lucifer” hit Italy, and in particular the south of the country, where a record-breaking temperature of 48.8 degrees was registered in Sicily.
The coldest summer of the rest of our lives.
Its olive trees ravaged by the Xylella pandemic and its fields parched by drought, Salento is literally a tinderbox. Small fires break out all the time, and where once you would have seen crowds of people working frantically to save their family’s trees, today you see absolutely nothing, as trunks that stood for centuries burn and crumble into ashes, and nobody cares.