‘We are made of this lagoon’: Ecological re-story-ation in Venice

Venice is one of the most iconic cities in the world; its peculiarities can all be linked back to its position within the largest tidal wetland in the Mediteranean. Yet, despite a long history of debates over preservation, conservation and restoration in the lagoon, this dynamic socio-natural waterscape has become mired in negative discourse and stuck in a state of managed decline. This paper argues that efforts to ‘save’ the city and its history have often accelerated this decline by severing the relational processes which co-produce the lagoon. We suggest that a pragmatic approach to ecological restoration requires engagement with the waterscape's collective roots, and that socio-ecological recovery will involve a pragmatic attention to the stories that are generated with and through local practices of dwelling with and caring for this ecology. We propose that the relative richness of situated socio-natural storying is entangled with, and reflective of, the ‘well-being’ of socio-ecological relations – and that, as such, their renewal might be understood as re-story-ation . The article presents data from a community mapping workshop, undertaken in 2023 as part of the EU WaterLANDS project. The results reveal deep, reciprocal connections between the lagoon, its city and their citizens. We illustrate how stories of refuge, origins, identity – generated with and through embodied engagement – shape socio-ecological relations in the Venetian lagoon. Yet we also demonstrate how stories are warped by nostalgia and solastalgia, serving to forestall meaningful change. The Venetian case resonates with broader (eco)systemic crises at multiple scales. We demonstrate that re-story-ation offers not only a lens to understand collective stasis in the face of ecological degradation, but a means to restore a socio-ecological system by (re)connecting community and commons in the present tense.