On April 29th 2026, at Ca’ Foscari University of Venezia, the webinar “Water that we didn’t know existed. What to do with it?” raised a question as scientific as it is strategic: what happens when we discover new resources, but we don’t have a system to manage them yet?
In contemporary debate, sustainability is often associated with the ability to identify new resources or develop innovative solutions. However, the real challenge lies not so much in discovery, but in its management. Each new resource adds an additional layer of complexity: it requires adequate infrastructure, clear processes, defined responsibilities, and a long-term vision. Without these elements, even the most promising opportunities risk remaining unexpressed or producing effects contrary to those desired.
Managing a resource means placing it within a system: making it accessible, understandable, and usable coherently. It also means establishing shared rules, defining operating modes and ensuring continuity over time.
In the absence of this framework, what arises as a solution can become a factor of disorder, generating inefficiencies, duplications, and coordination difficulties between the different actors involved.
Therefore, sustainability is not just an environmental issue, but an organizing principle. It is about the ability to maintain balance between usage and management, between innovation and control, between development and accountability. It is a process that is built progressively, through alignment, coherence and continuous adaptation to the contexts in which resources are employed.
In this scenario, each intermediate step plays a decisive role: from data collection to its interpretation, from the definition of procedures to their operational application, up to the monitoring of results. It is precisely in these steps that the most concrete critical issues emerge, because any mismatch can translate into slowdowns, errors, or waste. And in the long run, what is not managed in an effective way can hardly be considered sustainable.
For this reason, sustainability is not just about resources, but how they are managed: processes, information, and words. Because what is truly sustainable is what remains clear, consistent, and reliable over time.
