Thursday 2nd and Friday 3rd May there will be a double appointment between Ferrara and Ostellato entitled ‘Ferrara the day after tomorrow: the storm we don’t talk about’ to delve into the great unsaid of our areas: the land that is sinking, the Adriatic that is rising and everything that could happen with the return of the waters to the lower Ferrara area, where there once were the valleys.
An in-depth evening scheduled in the city of Este on Thursday at 8.30pm at the former Teatro Verdi (via Castelnuovo, 10) and proposed again in Ostellato on Friday at 9pm at the Corte Valle Conference Room (strada del Mezzano, 10). Protagonists, the journalist Alex Giuzio and the geologist Enzo Pranzini who present their books: ‘The fragile line. An ecological look at the Italian coasts’ and ‘Noah’s strategy. How to adapt to the advancing sea’. The two meetings are organized by Arci Ferrara in collaboration with Il Ragno d’Oro.
The province of Ferrara has almost half of its territory below sea level. It is an extreme case of an area, the northern Adriatic, poised between land and water, therefore very fragile and hit hard by the effects of the climate crisis. The rising sea, combined with soil subsidence and other phenomena, endangers a strip of territory that goes from the Marche to the Gulf of Trieste. Maps created on the basis of scientific studies show the possible situation: the current coastline has vanished and the water submerged the hinterland for tens of kilometers, as in the case of the provinces of Ferrara and Rovigo. It is difficult to imagine the environmental and social consequences of such an upheaval.
It won’t happen in 2100, will happen between now and 2100. Indeed, it is already happening: the increasingly frequent storm surges and tornadoes, the salt wedge rising up the rivers, the erosion of the coast, the continuous sinking of the ground are different manifestations of the same process that has been ongoing for some time. There is too little talk about it. The vast majority of people are still unaware of these prospects.
Giuzio and Pranzini’s books are readable by everyone, but at the same time scientifically solid and documented: precious for framing a topic that risks appearing intractable because it is so disturbing and disproportionate to our daily lives. In the first it is described in every aspect the current state of our coastlinesin the second models and are proposed strategies to adapt to the advancing sea so as to best accommodate the returning water without wasting resources unnecessarily.
The architect Sergio Fortini, the historian, will dialogue with the authors Michele Nani and the writer Wu Ming 1. To embellish the two appointments, the distant greeting of Luciana Castellinahonorary president of Arci Nazionale.
