When thinking about Venice, many adjectives might come to mind: romantic, historic, picturesque, timeless. But sustainable? Perhaps not. It’s difficult to think of Venice as a sustainable place. In fact, at first glance, it seems quite the opposite: a city built on a forest of timber poles driven into the mud of a lagoon; a utopia sustained by sheer optimism, ingenuity and, as the UNESCO World Heritage listing puts it, “the victorious struggle against the elements.”

And if this ongoing tension between human endeavor and nature has proven successful for the past 16 centuries, today the focus appears to lie increasingly on the struggle itself. Rising water levels, environmental changes to the lagoon’s ecosystem, and increasingly frequent and devastating high tides—coupled with mass tourism that strains the city’s urban and social fabric—are steadily eroding Venice’s ability to persevere.