Exploring the Venetian Lagoon: Toward A New Culture of Environmental Heritage

Venice and its Lagoon, a UNESCO World Heritage property, epitomizes the challenges of water-related climate change. Historically, it has been an exemplary site of human life in close interaction with water. Today, with rising sea levels and intensifying storm surges, it offers a powerful case for developing cohesive, inclusive, and adaptive water management. The lessons emerging from Venice have relevance to other UNESCO heritage sites. In all its complexity, Venice underscores the need to recognize water’s dynamic nature in governance and to avoid reliance on rigid, fail-safe solutions, instead emphasizing collaborative actions supported by political commitment. This article reframes the heritage of Venice and its lagoon as a dynamic, amphibious process, and argues that collaborative, adaptive governance is the only viable path to a sustainable future.