Italy’s coastal regions rank among the primary victims of overtourism, according to a recent Demoskopika study analyzing tourist overcrowding across Italian provinces. Eight of the country’s top fifteen most critically affected provinces rely heavily on beach tourism—a troubling finding given the sea’s vital economic role. The environmental group Marevivo, with four decades of marine conservation experience, warns that uncontrolled tourism is causing irreversible damage to marine ecosystems.
Marevivo cites devastating impacts including unchecked human pressure on coasts and beaches, inshore boat anchoring that destroys Posidonia seagrass meadows, and constant disturbance to marine life. Seabed degradation, disruption of local fauna, overwhelming strain on fragile coastlines lacking adequate management services, and littering compound the crisis. Plastic constitutes 60% of beach waste, with microplastics posing a particularly insidious threat. Record concentrations of 64 million floating particles per square kilometer have been recorded in some Mediterranean areas. Though containing just 1% of the world’s seawater, the Mediterranean now concentrates 7% of global microplastics (UNEP data).
“When discussing overtourism, we immediately think of Venice, Rome, or Florence,” stated Marevivo President Rosalba Giugni. “We rarely highlight how the sea and its delicate ecosystems were among the first victims of mass tourism and its resulting pollution. Yet, successful cases already exist in Italy where visionary administrations understood that protecting environmental heritage and beauty incentivizes, rather than hinders, tourism-related economies.”