Scope of work was the assessment of the environmental
sustainability of the “Venice Lagoon System”, according
to the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS)
and other relevant EU Directives and policies, including
in particular: Strategic Environmental Assessment
Directive, Water Framework Directive, Birds and
Habitats Directives, EU Biodiversity Strategy.
The study assessed the sustainability of present and
future management strategies and safeguarding
activities of Venice lagoon in relations to main economic
and environmental drivers, including among the
others climate change and sea level rise. The study
was carried out in cooperation with the Sustainability
Solutions Institute (SSI) of the University of California,
San Diego. SSI coordinated an international expert
panel that contributed to the study.
Services provided by Thetis included: (i) analysis of
EU environmental directives and policies relevant for
the study objective; (ii) analysis of key environmental
problems of Venice lagoon and related information
gap; (iii) analysis of sustainable scenarios for the
Venice lagoon system; (iv) assessment of management
practices and safeguarding interventions; (v)
identification of integrative strategies and measures
to be implemented; (vi) provision of state-of–the
art knowledge to develop an adaptive sustainable
management plan for the Venice lagoon system.
