All Things Biology

Written by Rebecca Hjelt

Last year, I made the best decision I’ve ever made. I packed my bags and set off to Venice, Italy, for my ‘study abroad’ year. Whenever I tell anyone that I lived, studied and worked in Venice, one of the most beautiful and unique cities in the world, I am bombarded with responses such as, ‘That must have been amazing!’, and it certainly was. To visit for a few days, Venice is the perfect romantic holiday destination, but living there long-term is a different beast. The city is complicated and burdened with problems relating to over-tourism and the effects of climate change. These issues are rendering Venice unrecognizable.

The first problem is simple: there are too many people entering the city, which puts strain on its infrastructure and pushes residents elsewhere. Every year, the city bows with the weight of up to 20 million visitors (1). The summer months and the famous Venice Carnival, which runs at the beginning of each year, see swarms of people entering the city, and most only stay for a few days as part of a cruise.

Bit by bit, the city’s disgruntled residents are being driven out into the peripheries, mainly to the mainland town of Mestre. Supermarkets, hardware stores and other essentials are being replaced by souvenir shops, selling things that local residents neither need nor want. This shift is evident in the numbers too; by 2020, services for visitors in Venice comprised over seventy percent of the job market (2). Not only are services such as public transport put under immense pressure to accommodate increasing numbers of people, but Venice itself is slowly becoming inhabitable, like a kind of Disneyland.

The second problem is more complex and arguably more pressing. Rising sea levels, a by-product of climate change and shifts in weather patterns, threaten to destroy Venice brick by brick. What locals call the ‘aqua alta’ (literally ‘high water’) disrupts everyday life, with public spaces such as Piazza San Marco being filled with seawater and blocking off certain areas. However, the aqua alta is more than just inconvenient. Many of the older buildings in Venice are made from soft, permeable brick (namely Istrian stone, a kind of baked clay). When seawater comes into contact with these materials and then the tides subside, the drying bricks begin to break down (3). This destructive process has already caused the outsides of many irreplaceable buildings to crumble, threatening the physical infrastructure of the city.

Though the situation may seem bleak, efforts have been made to reduce the impact of rising tides. The MOSE barrier system (short for ‘Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico’) consists of 78 mechanical barriers that are raised when tides become too high, blocking Venice and its lagoon from the rest of the Adriatic Sea and therefore, from incoming water (4, 5). The barriers work perfectly, though they are incredibly expensive to mobilise at almost €300,000 per operation (6). 

With weather patterns and tides becoming more and more unpredictable, it’s unfeasible to rely on the MOSE to solve the problem indefinitely. There may come a time when Venice will have to cut itself off from the ocean, posing threats to the marine biodiversity of the lagoon (5). Greater collaboration is needed at governmental level to channel investment into mitigation strategies and protect the city from these threats, or the city may well sink without a trace.

Reference List:

1. De Guzman, C. Venice Has Begun Charging an Access Fee to Try to Curb ‘Hit-and-Run’ Tourists. Time. 2024. Available from: https://time.com/6970886/venice-day-visit-access-fee-hit-and-run-tourists-residents/
2. Camera di Commercio Venezia Rovigo. Job Sectors of Venice. December 2020. Venice, Italy. Available from: https://www.dl.camcom.it/dati-economici-e-statistici/statistica/studi-e-pubblicazioni/Demografia-imprese
3. Keahey, J. Saving Venice from the Sea. NOVA. 2002. Available from: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/saving-venice/ 
4. MOSE barriers. Available from: https://www.mosevenezia.eu/project/?lang=en
5. Bubola, E. & Horowitz, J. Venice is saved! Woe is Venice. New York Times. 2023. Available from: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/01/world/europe/venice-mose-flooding.html
6. Buckley, J. The flood barriers that might save Venice. CNN Travel. 2022. Available from:https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/mose-venice-flood-barriers/index.html