Definire lo sviluppo, creare l’ambiente. Una prospettiva storica

The Fucino and the Trasimeno Lakes are two closed Italian lakes that faced two opposite destinies during the period between XVIII and XIX century: the first one dried up while the other one was reclaimed. Their history can be studied as paradigmatic cases of the close relationship between development/environment/culture. The resumption of the debate around the story of these two lakes allows us to highlight how - on the basis of the peculiar and variable concepts of “development” - social actors have been shaping nature often in a radical way, ending up in “creating” the environment. The outcomes of the parallel stories of the Fucino and Trasimeno lakes clearly show how important the unitary study of the natural and anthropic dimensions is, both for the material data of the human presence in the environment and for the cultural dimension, since it is human beings who conceptualize nature and all other realities related to the environmental issue.