AMare. Sea Water Love
20.12.2019
Whole cities injured by the sea, billions of people thirsting for water and the future.
Into the sea goes our waste, from the sea comes our food.
Watery are the eyes of women and men fleeing by sea.
If only we knew how to love the planet’s water, otherwise, naturally.
There will be no Christmas Tree in the old courtyard of Palazzo Bo during this Holiday Season. Instead, the University of Padua has chosen to engage people through an artwork installation recounting stories of water covering land and its people. Stories of escape and destiny, of climate and nature, of needs and salvation. Of love.
A destiny built on water
If we fail to stop global warming, a hundred years from now Venice could be completely underwater.
This is the warning given by ENEA’s coordinated international studies on the variations of the level of the Mediterranean Sea.
Other surveys, published by Nature Communications, show that by 2050 lands now housing over 300mil people could be submerged, unless carbon emissions are drastically reduced and coastal defences are strengthened.
Meanwhile UN informs us that access to clean, safe water is still an unattainable goal for most of the world's population.
In 2015, three out of ten people (2.1 billion) had no access to drinking water; and six out of ten people (4.5 billion) did not have suitable sanitary facilities.
In 2017, conflicts and persecutions caused 68.5 million citizens to leave their homes, while 25.3 million people a year were forced to migrate due to natural disasters – twice as many as in the early Seventies.
In 2019, the number of people who, with great difficulty, managed to reach Italy is equal to 10,873. In the same year, the Mediterranean saw the death of 743 migrants heading towards the coasts of southern Europe.
A destiny built on water: the most precious of resources, turned into a threat by our own indifference.
During the 2018 Christmas Holiday, the University of Padua devoted an artwork installation to the Earth: a prayer for the environment, which is an increasingly endangered ecosystem that demands protection, attention, and a commitment from each one of us.
