The Italy-Switzerland border is melting

How a ski lodge became trapped in a border dispute. Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don t miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO Italy’s land border cuts through the highest altitudes of the Alps — crossing snowfields, mountain peaks, and massive glaciers. For centuries, the watershed line (which marks the divide where water flows either north or south off of the mountains) served as a natural boundary between Italy and its European neighbors. But beginning in the 1980s, geographic surveyors noticed something: The glaciers whose peaks had long marked the watershed line were retreating … and moving Italy’s border along with them. The only inhabited place nearby — an Italian ski lodge called the Rifugio Guide del Cervino — was caught right in the middle. Since then, Italy, Switzerland, and Austria have piloted a new kind of “mobile border” agreement, where boundary lines move with the changing landscape. Their solution might prove crucial as climate change reshapes water-based borders around the world. Correction: the watershed line at 00:41 was mislabeled and drawn incorrectly. We’ve fixed the error to reflect the correct watershed boundaries. Further reading: Before the book, Marco debuted an interactive installation at the Venice Biennale called “Italian Limes” — Limes is Latin for boundary — with a GPS-powered drawing machine that traced the shifting border in real time: http://www.italianlimes.net/ Read more about Marco, Elisa, and Andrea’s book here: https://www.arch.columbia.edu/books/catalog/369-a-moving-border-alpine-cartographies-of-climate-change The historical maps we projected are from swisstopo, Switzerland s national mapping agency. They have a great interactive map tool you can check out here: https://map.geo.admin.ch/?lang=en&topic=swisstopo&bgLayer=ch.swisstopo.pixelkarte-farbe&layers_timestamp=19691231,&zoom=8&E=2620551.74&N=1088893.78&layers=ch.swisstopo.zeitreihen,ch.swisstopo.swissboundaries3d-land-flaeche.fill&time=1969&catalogNodes=1430 And read more from swisstopo about the border changes: https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/en/knowledge-facts/sovereign-border/national-boundary/moving-boundaries.html This New Yorker piece by Zoey Poll is a beautiful deep dive into the story of the Rifugio: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-europe/the-uncertain-fate-of-an-alpine-mountain-lodge And so is this Wall Street Journal story by Eric Sylvers: https://www.wsj.com/articles/italys-alpine-border-melts-and-leaves-a-pasta-restaurant-in-switzerlandmaybe-11582134089 Lastly, hear from the owner of the Rifugio himself — and how the border line uncertainty is affecting his restaurant renovation plans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4KK1FbYb6w This is the fourth of our themed videos for winter sports week at Vox. The first three videos were about ski jump, speed skating, and women s Olympic monobob. Check out the playlist here: https://bit.ly/3oESqgx Make sure you never miss behind the scenes content in the Vox Video newsletter, sign up here: http://vox.com/video-newsletter Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what s really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com Support Vox s reporting with a one-time or recurring contribution: http://vox.com/contribute-now Shop the Vox merch store: http://vox.com/store Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE Follow Vox on Facebook: http://facebook.com/vox Follow Vox on Twitter: http://twitter.com/voxdotcom Follow Vox on TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@voxdotcom