Venice, often referred to as “the floating city”, was founded by settlers in the 7th Century on salt marshes in a beautiful Lagoon protected by the sea by long, thin land banks. A total of 124 islands make up modern-day Venice, linked together by countless bridges and little stairways. It's unique geography and location in North East Italy made it a powerful force in the trading alliances in the Middle Ages. Nowadays, it's famous for its beauty, its architecture and its culture and has become one of the world's leading tourism hotspots. In fact, Venice is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Unfortunately this kind of mass tourism has led to an unmanageable and highly damaging increase in marine litter, water traffic emissions, solid waste and sewage release which have all contributed to an increase in harmful water toxicity. Pollution is a real threat for the lagoon which may eventually destroyed it if not addressed adequately.
In the 1920s, Marghera, a town on the outskirts of Venice, developed into an important and prosperous industrial zone and port. Factories, chemical plants and refineries were built at an alarming rate. This period of industrial growth had an irreversible impact on the lagoon’s fragile and delicate ecosystem. Unregulated waste poured into the Lagoon for decades from these industries, up until people began to fight for the environment in the 1980s. Dioxins and heavy metals were detected in the Lagoon in 1984 which were, and still are, highly toxic to fauna and humans alike. Nowadays more than 70% of wastewater goes to purification plants but this period can never fully be erased, since native fauna and flora is still struggling due to non-biodegradable pollutants that are still present today.
In the 16th century a sewage system was put in place in Venice. “Gatoli” or underground channels were built that carried wastewater to the canals. The tide would then take out the old dirty water and replace it with new, clean water twice a day. In the 16th century this was seen as an incredibly effective and efficient solution but these systems cannot cope with the disposal demands of modern Venice with pre pandemic visitor numbers reaching 60000 people a day, more than doubling its population. Chemicals from soaps, shampoos, sun protection etc flow into the canals constantly since the city does not have any control on their release. It is true that nowadays some residencies have sedimentation tanks that biologically decompose contaminants but these are few and far between. Unfortunately there is also a limit on introducing new water treatment centres since it is impossible to justify structural damage to a UNESCO Heritage site in order to build these centres.
As Davide Polletto, Executive Director of NGO “Venice Lagoon Plastic Free” underlines, “Venice is a popular destination like many others but waste disposal problems of this particular location are not easy to manage like in a normal tourist city. Mass tourism and Industry have had a huge negative impact on the water quality and toxicity.” In February 2019 a report by the European Parliament acknowledged that water pollution levels in Venice were extremely worrying, this was followed by a global pandemic. On the 10th of March 2020 Italy went into lockdown to try to control the spread of the deadly Coronavirus. Water traffic came to a halt on Venice’s canals, tourists disappeared and the surreal situation provided a unique opportunity to analyse the effects of tourism on a lagoon that had been invaded day in, day out every, single day for decades. Covid-19 lockdown measures almost immediately revealed the extent of the human impact on this exhausted lagoon.
Almost as soon as the lockdown started news items started to appear on the internet regarding “swans that had finally returned to Venice’s canals” and “the dolphins that had miraculously swam into the canals”. Both of these claims were proved false almost immediately: swans had always been in Venice and the video released of dolphins was proven to have been taken in Sardinia, hundreds of miles away from the Lagoon. However, it was undeniable that the water in the canals was definitely looking noticeably clearer. Marine life was visible. We were now able to see 50 to 60 cm below the surface of the water and for the first time light was managing to reach the bottom of these canals. Since there were less boats taking tourists around and less traffic altogether due to the lack of tourism there was less pollution from diesel powered commuter loads and water buses, but there was also a chance for the sediment that had usually been constantly stirred up by the boat traffic to settle, thus allowing us better visibility.
There were also ecological benefits of this lack of traffic. Organisms profited from the lack of turbidity in the water and there were “never before seen low levels of pollution in the lagoon”. The founder of the Venice Resilience Group, Giovanni Cecconi reports. He added “the environmental impact of the lockdown could be a good place to start for the Venetian ecosystem. With more light reaching the bottom of the canals the vegetation is stabilising and it is gaining long-term benefits. The lockdown may provide the catalyst for change triggering further initiatives to protect the Lagoon”.
In conclusion, the water quality of the Venetian canals improved substantially after the lockdown. There was a 40% decrease in the number of identifiable pollutants known as “volatile organic compounds” which are primarily derived from “plastics, water traffic and tourism activity'' says Theresa Cecchi, the Italian chemist who conducted the research published in “Science of Total Environment”. She added that “this drastic drop highlights the environmental toll of Venice's millions of annual visitors.
Following the release of the evidence that the lockdown provided us, many Venetians are calling out for a more eco-responsible and sustainable model of tourism in Venice. There is a fundamental need to control and cut down the boat traffic and mass tourism and in doing so we might discover a unique biosphere.
We need to learn from the lockdown, reflect on what it shows us and figure out a way to organise and limit tourism so that it does not destroy this unique and beautiful city and its surrounding Lagoon.
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POOR FISHH 😱
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OMG DEY SHOULD FIX IT
Wow