Venice is in grave danger: Italia Nostra asks Unesco to list the city as a site at risk. Here's why

According to Italia Nostra, Venice is in grave danger: the risks that the lagoon city suffers were highlighted by theincident last June 2, the association points out, so there seems to be common agreement that large ships should no longer pass through St. Mark’s Basin and the Giudecca Canal. However, this is not enough to save Venice, according to Italia Nostra. “Most people who love Venice,” the association points out in a note, “do not know that many other risks endanger the universal values of the site recognized by UNESCO as worthy of being handed down intact to future generations. Lagoon erosion, growing tourist pressure, high-impact development projects, restorations and interventions by archistars of the moment on the monumental heritage: it seems like a conspiracy to which Venice risks succumbing.”

Already in the past (in 2011 and 2012) Italia Nostra had asked the World Heritage Committee, the Unesco commission that monitors sites included in the World Heritage List , that there were no longer conditions to keep the site of “Venice and its lagoon” on the list. As a result of the reports, UNESCO had sent a mission to Venice in October 2015, which was followed by recommendations that, however, the Italian state has only partially complied with.

In the coming days (June 30 to July 10) a new annual meeting of the World Heritage Committee will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan, and for this occasion Italia Nostra has submitted some observations to highlight the omissions contained in the Reports submitted by the City of Venice, and especially to highlight the lack of a project on the city. In particular, there are seven points in the “counter-report” on which the association focuses its attention: the fact that the Municipality of Venice does not work collaboratively with other institutions (in particular, Italia Nostra points out, the Municipality excluded the mayor of Chioggia, the second largest city in the lagoon, from the Report for Unesco, and opposed with an appeal to the Tar to the MiBAC’s proposal to place monumental constraint on the Basin of San Marco and the Giudecca Canal); the fact that Venice is the first city in Italy and the third in Europe with the most pollution from cruise traffic; the revocation of some of the measures of the tourism governance project sent in the Unesco report (i.e., turnstiles to divert tourist flows and the displacement from St. Mark’s of the gran turismo launches that bring tourists to Venice from seaside resorts in other municipalities) and the lack of effective measures to reduce tourist pressure; the government’s cancellation of the Marghera option as an alternative cruise ship route (not feasible for reasons of safety, conflict with port commercial, and preservation of the Lguna), and especially the fact that Unesco’s recommendations that the entire lagoon should be forbidden to cruise traffic are not being respected; the critical nature of the Mose; the fact that Venice has undergone major alterations in recent years (e.g., alterations to the urban pavement for the laying of fiber optics); and the disagreements between the City Council and the Ministry over the extension of the buffer zone.

Italia Nostra has therefore turned to Unesco, they make known, “believing that the drift of Venice can only be stopped with a symbolic gesture: inclusion on the danger list. It is no longer the time for extensions, granted over and over again, but for a responsible decision, a conscious, albeit suffered, stance. Which necessarily imposes a rethink and a change of course. So we hope. Inclusion on the list of endangered sites could be the first step toward redemption, in order to obtain more stringent protection.”

Venice is in grave danger: Italia Nostra asks Unesco to list the city as a site at risk. Here's why

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