stands ready to step up its own commitment to the fight against crime, both organizationally and in terms of resources. we are fully aware that money laundering and the financing of terrorism, with their great inherent danger of contagion, now constitute a grave threat to the democratic order. today i will briefly review the main problems impeding the prevention and suppression of money laundering and suggest possible remedies. the results of action to date are set out in documents annexed to my report. 2. the development of the law on money laundering 2. 1 the basic guidelines italy ’ s series of legislative measures to coordinate the battle against organized crime began in the early 1980s. in 1982, having perceived the extreme danger of criminal attacks on the legal economy, parliament introduced the crime of mafia criminal conspiracy, characterized among other things by the aim of controlling business enterprises and reinvesting the proceeds of crime. italy ’ s current legislation on the prevention of money laundering is thus the product of more than two decades of engagement on the part of parliament and the authorities. it has adopted, and in a number of instances anticipated, the indications of the various international fora. its development has been consistent with several fundamental choices : the distinction between prevention and suppression ; the central management of information and evaluations ; and cooperation between intermediaries and law enforcement authorities. the changes made in recent years have incorporated the innovations introduced by international standards and, subsequently, by community law. the revision of the 40 recommendations of the financial action task force ( fatf ) in 2003, the issue of 9 special recommendations to combat the financing of terrorism, and the approval of three community directives, two of them quite recently 1, represent the tangible sign of a regulatory framework that is attentive to the changes in criminal techniques. legislative trends have followed two lines of development. one – found in the second directive on money laundering ( 2001 / 97 / ec ) – involves extending to additional professional and commercial categories exposed to the risk of laundering the obligation to cooperate actively in prevention and suppression, previously limited to banks and other financial intermediaries. the second – introduced by the third directive ( 2005 / 60 / ec ) – makes the stringency of the know - your - customer requirements commensurate with the risk of money laundering as the intermediary infers it from the nature of the counterparty, the type of service requested, and geographical location. this makes the rules more flexible, but it also heightens the responsibilities both for intermedia

sustainable development and climate risks : the role of central banks speech by ignazio visco governor of the bank of italy sustainable development festival 2019 ‘ finance and financial system for sustainable development ’ the italian alliance for sustainable development rome, 21 may 2019 the question of whether natural resources and the development objectives of nations are compatible is an issue that has long been debated in the field of economics. it dates back to at least the end of the 18th century with the works of thomas malthus on food supply and population growth and has re - emerged a number of times since then in the public debate. for example, at the start of the 1970s, in the wake of the demographic explosion and the related exponential growth in consumption, the simulations produced for the project of the club of rome on the ‘ predicament of mankind ’ set off an alarm which resonated strongly at international level concerning the risks to the survival of our ecosystems and of the human race itself. it was then observed that the scarcity of natural resources envisioned in that analysis, largely based on a linear extrapolation of the trend under way, did not take sufficient account of two fundamental mechanisms that regulate the functioning of the economic system : the rebalancing capacity of prices and the endogenous nature of technological change. when the resources used in the production of goods and services become more scarce, an increase in their prices discourages demand and provides an incentive to invest in new production methods that utilize fewer of those resources. although these mechanisms make it particularly difficult to make reliable long - term projections, the fears for ‘ sustainability ’ – that is, the ability to meet current needs without compromising future generations ’ chances of doing the same – have not faded. over the last three decades the biggest concerns have been in relation to the effects of climate change, a factor for which there are no ‘ natural ’ market prices. in 1992, following the earth summit in rio de janeiro, the united nations framework convention on climate change was born, giving rise to the kyoto protocol ( in 1997 ) and the paris agreement ( in 2015 ). in the autumn of that year, robert solow, winner of the nobel prize for economics in 1997 for his contributions to modern theories of economic growth, spoke before an audience of environmentalists, stating that : i do not have to remind you that ‘ sustainability ’ has become a hot topic in the last few years [ … ] as far as i can tell, however, discussion of sustainability has been mainly an occasion for