Climate change is changing geography. Politicians usually don’t care. But in one particular case, the melting of the Theodol glacier is now sparking political debate.LucioTocco, owner of RifugioTeodulo mountain lodge, has to ask himself which side he really stands on these days. Swiss or Italian? The reason is the Theodol glacier, near which there is a hut, which is already on the Italian side. The glacier has been melting for decades, shifting the border between Switzerland and Italy.
The former boundary line ran along the drainage gap. A point where meltwater flows down both sides of a mountain towards one country or the other. At the time of its construction in 1984, RifugioTeodulo was still entirely on Italian soil. But due to melting glaciers, two-thirds of the inns, including most of the 40 beds and the restaurant, are now on the southern side of Switzerland.
Melting glaciers is not really a political issue
Alain Wicht is the Senior Border Officer at Swisstopo and is responsible for the 7,000 border markers along the 1,935 kilometer long border between Inner Switzerland, Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Liechtenstein. Between 1973 and 2010, the Tudol glacier lost almost a quarter of its mass. This exposed the ice bed, changed the watershed, and forced both neighbors to redraw a 100-meter section of their border. A process that, according to Weicht, is completely natural and usually organized without politicians.Now that a small mountain lodge is involved, things get complicated as it adds “economic value” to a country that usually relies on tourism. Witcheta’s Italian counterparts declined to comment “due to the complex international situation”.
But even in such cases there is a simple solution, Jean-Philippe Amstein, former president of Swisstopo, told The Guardian. The countries concerned exchange plots of land of equal size and value. But in this case, he says: “Switzerland is not interested in getting a piece of the iceberg” and “Italians are not able to replace the loss of the Swiss region.”
The border has always been a contentious issue between Switzerland and Italy
The border was already discussed diplomatically in 2018. However, at that time it was a cable car station that was to be built a few meters from the largest ski area in the world. In 2021, the parties agreed in Florence. However, the details are still confidential and will remain so until the Swiss government approves the outcome. According to the Guardian, that won’t happen before 2023.However, he has good news for the fifty-one-year-old manager of the mountain hut. The resort will still be Italian because the owner has always been Italian. “The menu is Italian, the wine is Italian and the taxes are Italian,” he says.Only on maps from Swisstopo does the solid pink band of the Swiss border initially remain a dashed line as it passes through the cover.
For more read: https://www.socialpost.news/climate-change-melting-glaciers-shift-the-border-between-italy-and-switzerland/
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