The dilemma of saving Venice: Lagoon or city?

In a city normally teeming with tourists, Andrea Turchetto is a rare breed: a true Venetian, born and raised in the floating city. Unlike other locals, he still calls it home. His glass bead business is based at the heart of Venice, in the Cannaregio district.

Andrea was six years old in 1966, when the city experienced its highest tideon record. In 2019, history repeated itself and he witnessed the second most devastating episode of the so-called acqua alta. 

But this time, it was different. Authorities had originally warned that the tide would not exceed 1.3 metres, he explains. Later that night on November 12, it rose to 1.87 metres, with gusts of wind reaching 110 km per hour. 

"It all happened so fast," he recalls. "There wasn't enough time to save everything."

There is anger in Andrea’s voice, directed at the politicians and local authorities who could have prevented such a disaster from happening.

"There was negligence," he says. "It's not an issue of climate change, something didn't work out as it should have."

Scientists, though, are unequivocal: climate change is partly to blame. 

The acqua alta is indeed a natural phenomenon, provoked by a combination of high tides, strong winds and variations in the atmospheric pressure. An increase in their frequency and intensity, however, is the result of a warming, changing climate. 

Out of the top ten tides, five have occurred in the last 20 years; a sign that the phenomenon is accelerating. Given Venice's unique setting – a constellation of 100 islands – and the fact that the ground underneath it is sinking, the city could very well vanish underwater within a century.

To stay afloat, Venice has erected a set of floodgates with a biblical name: MOSE, Italian for Moses.