Chiara SPADARO, University of Padua - Department of Historical and Geographic Sciences and the Ancient World (DiSSGeA), Italy
In 2021, the much-celebrated 1600th anniversary of Venice's founding was a starting point for several top-down sustainability projects. This is the case of the project “Venice, the world capital of sustainability”, approved by the Veneto Council and then endorsed by the Ministry of Public Administration. Or of “VeniSia – Venice Sustainability Innovation Accelerator”, to promote various initiatives in the field of sustainability, focusing on some SDGs. Or, again, of the Venetian project for the “New European Bauhaus”, which aims to implement the Green Deal. None of these projects, however, reflect on food policies, an essential arena of debate and practices when dealing with local sustainability policies, and even more in pandemic times: the challenge of feeding a growing population in a sustainable and ethical way needs urgent answers.
Starting from a brief analysis of these institutional projects, my speech move on the narratives from below on lagoonscape’ sustainability. That told by the stakeholders involved on the local food system: farmers, fishermen (and -women), beekeepers and cooks, for example, whose job is undergoing irreversible metamorphosis due to the complex dynamics that affect the landscape they dwell, and where they work. I will present some results from my PhD field research in Venice, on food policies in urban lagoons, using oral history and geographical methodologies.
Verified the absence of food matters in these institutional sustainability projects, indeed, I propose to listen to the voices of these local makers who show us, by narratives and practices, another way to food sustainability, far from the business of mass tourism and close to global warming’s problems. The islands of the Lagoon represent a marginal landscape compared with the mainstream Venetian narratives and its policies, but still productive and alive. It is right there that these voices can found a counter-narrative and a new poetic of sustainability for the Lagoon.
Mots clés : Venice|lagoonscapes|sustainability|food policy|oral history
A103752CS