Indeed, ever since plague returned to Europe in the fourteenth century, the position of Venice and other Italian cities as centres of trade and travel put them at the frontline of epidemics. They were also conscious that their populations chafed against orders to stay quarantined in their houses and constantly sought ways to escape or alleviate the boredom of lockdown (as John Henderson has shown in his vivid study of In terms of broader political relations, the management of plague meant walking a diplomatic tightrope. Such measures would prove immensely influential across Europe and the Mediterranean.Venice was quick to borrow or adapt the most innovative examples of disease control from its near neighbours.
High water in Piazza San Marco, Venice, where flooding is becoming a more frequent occurrence (Pic: The Venetian floods had a high cost both to the local economy and to priceless cultural heritage including St Mark’s Basilica. Finance ministers could take the same approach to public finances in their countries.

The city was eerily still, apart from the constant plying of vessels back and forth to the The movement of people – and the commodities, money, ideas and innovations that travelled with them – were crucial in making Venice one of the wealthiest, most creative and most successful of Renaissance cities. However, most investments around the world still fail to take disaster and climate-related risk into account. While Renaissance medical theory was beginning to understand the concept of contagion and ways to counteract it, governments were acutely aware that stopping the spread of disease could mean cutting off the flow of trade that nourished their economies and the import of essential food supplies. Returning to Italy, a recent study by Banca d’Italia showed that regions which generate high value in the economy are also underinsured for flood risk, and that banks may already be discriminating against borrowers based on their catastrophe risk exposure. Don't miss any HWO posts. However, the increased flooding risk compounded by climate change and resulting high costs are major challenges.Why is it not always easy to finance resilience to these weather extremes? Cascading risks may create a further compounding effect.Europe plans to significantly scale up levels of public and private investment through instruments including InvestEU (the replacement to the European Fund for Strategic Investments), the Capital Markets Union and new measures being delivered under the Sustainable Finance Action Plan. In the wake of the Black Death, and the numerous, less lethal plagues that continued to strike with brutal regularity through the fifteenth century, these cities were spurred to introduce and refine innovative measures to counter the spread of disease. This system focused above all on restricting the movement of people suspected of carrying the disease while also allowing, as much as possible, the continuing flow of goods and merchandise. And sustainable investment is growing fast – Blackrock, the world’s largest fund manager, has forecast that the total share of sustainable investments in Exchange Traded Funds globally will increase from today’s 3% of total assets, to 21% of all assets by 2028.Risk from disasters and climate change is systemic and affects every country. Your server might also be unable to connect to Instagram at this time.Make sure this account has posts available on instagram.com. The resulting, critical delay in implementing the established mechanisms allowed the disease to spread unchecked and increased the devastating death toll.

This piece is part of HWO’s feature on ‘Apocalypse Then and Now’, bringing together radical reflections and historical perspectives on catastrophe and calamity.How have crises (both real and imagined), and responses to them, shaped our world? A tidal wave of contagion overwhelmed the Republic’s health system.

At the same time, its spy service sought to infiltrate the smokescreens erected by other states and bring back reports of outbreaks.It is perhaps not surprising then that in 1575 the Venetian government initially hesitated to act, caught between the conflicting opinions of expert doctors, the health officials and its own economic concerns. When Venice stopped traffic with its subject city Padua during another plague crisis in 1555, for instance, the Paduans complained strenuously that their crippled economy brought more hardship to ordinary people than the disease itself.
History Workshop Online (HWO) is the online magazine of Lodging house keepers were banned from providing accommodation to ‘low lives and scoundrels’, or squeezing too many people into rooms that might become breeding grounds for disease.When an epidemic hit, such measures tightened. Europe could create an official definition of resilient infrastructure and could take steps to embed these investments in its next budget.Risks from climate change and disasters caused by natural hazards pose a systemic threat to the financial system due to a lack of transparency and awareness in the marketplace.Europe could take new actions to require that credit rating agencies integrate these risks into their ratings, and that institutional investors integrate them into their decision-making. Activities which are not resilient, or which could cause maladaptation to climate change, could be listed as “unsustainable” activities within the new European investment taxonomy. The scale of financial flows and investments is massive.