Università Iuav di Venezia will take part in the Climate Week in New York, promoted by the United Nations, within a number of international events devoted to the challenges of climate change and the ecological transition.

Among these, Università Iuav di Venezia is co-promoter, together with the Future Food Institute, FAO, United Nations University, Venice Climate Week, ICOMOS, SEEDS and Urban Water Security, of the workshop “Water–Energy Nexus. The Closed Budget: Who Draws from a Bankrupt Account?”, to be held on Thursday 24 September at 12 p.m. (New York time). The meeting is devoted to the growing imbalance between the availability of and demand for water resources, and to the need to rethink policies, development models and planning tools in a condition that goes beyond the traditional notion of “water crisis”.

The starting point of the discussion lies in the arguments of the report Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era, published by UNU-INWEH at the United Nations. In much of the world we are no longer consuming only our “water income” — rain, rivers, renewable flows — but are liquidating capital: the aquifers accumulated over millennia, glaciers, wetlands, living soils. This is not a simple temporary shortage, but a genuine water insolvency to be managed. Within this “closed budget”, there are no new resources, only transfers: every litre allocated to one purpose is a litre taken away from another. Water thus ceases to be merely an environmental issue and becomes the instrument through which a society defines its priorities.

The meeting will feature Francesco Musco, president of Corila, research director and full professor of urban planning at Università Iuav di Venezia, together with Simone Venturini, mayor of Venice, Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), Meisha Hunter, president of the Committee on Water and Heritage, ICOMOS–ISC Water, and representatives of FAO, the Club of Rome, universities and international institutions.

Taking part in the Climate Week strengthens Università Iuav’s international standing on the topics of climate adaptation, territorial and urban planning and water governance, while also enhancing Venice as a place for experimentation and knowledge production on the relationships between cities, water and climate change.