Venice and its lagoon fin de siecle

The recent projections of sea level raising will make the closings of the mobile gate in the inlets of the Venice lagoon, designed to defend the city from high waters, more frequent. At the end of this century, the sea level will force the gates to be closed so often that it will be necessary to definitively separate the lagoon from the sea. It is an unavoidable choice with profound ecological and socio-cultural implications, and finds strong obstacles in the acceptance by the population and policymakers, to which, however, one must reach out. The management of a closed coastal lagoon will be complex but some of the ecological functions that it performs, and the ecological services it offers now, can be provided, on a regional scale, by new lagoons obtained by following the necessary planning and management of the coast. The interventions on the Lagoon of Venice must therefore be inserted in a multi-scale and long-term design that involves the entire North Adriatic coast. However, these dramatic interventions may also provide some opportunities such as, for example on a local scale, the management of sea level within the city and, on a regional scale, the optimization of ecological functions and ecosystem services provided by the nascent lagoons through an oriented and adaptive design.