If you're allocated to visit Italy, you will be based at the Monash Prato Centre. Here you will be exploring the evolving relationship between communities and the natural environment, and witness first-hand the impact that this has. You will be asked to think about how communities in Italy can balance the changing nature of economic and social development and environmental protection in some of the most widely visited places in the world.
In the middle of the program, you will then visit one of three field sites:
Cinque-Terre: you will explore the impact that climate change, rural depopulation, abandonment of agricultural lands, landscape instability and mass tourism is having on the World Heritage area of the Cinque-Terre national park.
Venice: you will be prompted to think about the impact of tourism and its challenges, like balancing the financial, environmental and community-based implications of the high-levels of tourism in an already uncertain environment. Rising sea levels and increasing levels of water pollution are not only threatening the historical centre of Venice but also the fragile ecosystem of the canals.
Siena: visiting the University of Siena and the Santa Chiara Lab, you will see first-hand how technology and multidisciplinary innovation is being used to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals at the community level, and all around Italy.
