The Svimez reportpresented yesterday in Rome, is a prose that is tinged with melancholy and worries, between present and future, for a South destined to huddle again, emptying itself of people and noise. In the chapter dedicated to the generational crisis and migration, the Association notes how “decreased birth rates, demographic decline and growing generational imbalances represent a national issue which becomes an emergency in the South”. The elaboration of Istat forecasts to 2050 see, in fact, a fifth of Calabria destined to disappear (exactly, 19.9% of the current structure) with a population that will fall from 1,847,000 in 2023 to 1,478,000 in 2050 with a loss of 368 thousand inhabitants. Only Basilicata (-22.5%) and Sardinia (-22.0%) are expected to do worse. There will be fewer and fewer residents in the small municipalities, endless patches of this region that will quickly close. Svimez indicates the way to limit the effects of the demographic winter: «The negative effects of the decline in the potentially active population should be countered with significant increases in the employment rate – recognizing that the greatest margins for improvement concern women – and in productivity of the system. A real challenge in a context dominated by an elderly population, less inclined to follow the paths of innovation and technological challenges which instead represent the ideal terrain for younger generations who are increasingly deprived and less protected”.
Province in difficulty
Cosentino is the largest portion in that fifth of Calabria which risks no longer being there by 2050. A process of decomposition that has already begun twenty years ago. In small towns at risk of depopulation the streets are increasingly silent and life often revolves around the only bar that resists the economic and demographic crisis. In the innermost villages it becomes increasingly difficult to hear voices, organize a network of infrastructures, connections and services. Including social, educational, cultural and scholastic ones. And so the young people go away, leave and never return. Parents often follow their children and as the windows and doors are closed, the streets of the villages look more and more like a desert. Thus begins the journey of no return, the abandonment of countries that solitude transforms into ghost places, centers with a difficult present and an uncertain future. People are running away after seeing schools, kindergartens, post offices and medical guards close. It happens, above all, in the more internal areas, where depopulation is faster than elsewhere. The province is made up of 150 municipalities but those that boast a resident population exceeding 5 thousand inhabitants are only 32. In the other 118, the flight of residents risks erasing their memory in a land that politics has filled exclusively with electoral promises.