1246 | 272 | Sad rivers in the time of Anthropocene. Drying waterscapes and emotional thirst | Chiara Spadaro, Francesco Vallerani
Environmental degradation can have strong effects on psychic stability of a large part of people. Indeed, there is a close link between environment distress and human distress. Nowadays urgent issues are strongly affecting the quality of lived waterscapes, mostly due to the impacts of climate crisis. To date no climate denier position could actually refuse the eloquence of facts like the worldwide increase of extreme droughts and floods. Such human induced alteration of hydrological cycle is furthermore heavily influencing the size and span of snow cover, the extent of permafrost and the endurance of sea ice and glaciers, all affecting ocean rise. In addition to the effects of the relentless atmosphere warming, further concerns are aroused by water pollution, salinization, overconsumption of freshwater supplies. Finally, we can’t forget the misuses due to engineering interventions to change most of river catchments in achieving multiple goals, ranging from water intakes for agriculture to invasive dissections of dams for hydropower plants. Such threats are exacerbated by the noticeable spread of both urban sprawl phenomenon and intensification of agribusiness that is affecting the most densely inhabited plains of the world._x000D_
The main goal of this contribution is to deal not only with drying waterscapes, but also with the serious damages to the common watery sense of place, very often causing a collective anxiety that can degenerate in several states of depressive distress. Rivers’ trauma (physical bleakness) turns into affective trauma (psychological bleakness) when damage to the waterscapes signifies change and erosion in people’s sense of belonging to and identification with their inborn hydrophilia.
Chiara Spadaro, Francesco Vallerani
Chiara Spadaro – Research fellow, Università degli Studi di Udine; Francesco Vallerani – Senior Researcher, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia
ID Abstract: 272