In Cortina d’Ampezzo’s main square a translucent sculpture of a woman with skis and a Dior handbag passes for ice until people touch it and find plastic. The statue is a small, ironic emblem of the contradiction at the center of these Games: an elaborate attempt to preserve a wintry image even as the natural winter it depends on is fading.
Climate change has thinned snowfall across the Dolomites, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, pushing organizers toward artificial snow and new infrastructure to guarantee white slopes. Ski lifts now pass over brown grass and exposed rock; narrow ribbons of machine-made snow are kept on the pistes. Italy’s 2026 bid for Milan and the Dolomites pledged sustainability and protection of fragile mountain ecosystems. Local activists and conservation groups say reality is far from that promise.
Around Cortina, locals point to a sweeping construction program tied to the Games: roughly 98 approved projects, more than 20 cranes in town, new roads, expanded parking and venue renovations. A new bobsleigh run has been cut into a mountainside as a literal buttress to the town; hundreds of ancient larch trees were felled to make way for the concrete channel. Luigi Casanova of Mountain Wilderness surveys the site and calls it a reinvention of Cortina from the “Queen of the Dolomites” to what he dubs the “Queen of Cement.” He remembers the day chainsaws started while a cellist played nearby — a jarring contrast between art and the sound of falling timber.
The International Olympic Committee suggested using an existing Innsbruck sliding track, but Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and infrastructure minister, insisted events stay on Italian soil, tweeting in 2024 that “The Games must be Italian games” and denouncing critics as saboteurs.
Environmental groups have pushed back. Eight associations, including WWF Italy, released a joint statement saying they found “no evidence to certify the environmental sustainability” of projects promised in the 2019 bid. Many approvals, they say, were granted without full ecological studies — a procedural gap that alarmed conservationists. Publicly available documents indicate that no comprehensive environmental assessment was done for more than 60 percent of approved works, a shortfall activists call the “great omission.” Fabio Tullio of watchdog Open Olympics 2026 warns that incomplete reviews raise the risk of a lasting negative legacy for the Dolomites’ biodiversity.
Snowmaking illustrates the awkwardness of the sustainability claim. The Games are projected to need about 84.8 million cubic feet of water — roughly 380 Olympic swimming pools — to produce artificial snow. That water will be drawn from Alpine rivers and aquifers, and activists warn such withdrawals could deplete streams and harm aquatic ecosystems. On the Boite River, observers documented black plastic pipes siphoning water, diesel-powered pumps growling, and the smell of fuel near extraction sites. Organizers describe pumping rates of roughly 25 gallons per second to lift water to higher slopes.
Artificial snow also carries heavy energy costs: high-pressure pumping, refrigeration and near-continuous operation in marginal winter temperatures all require power. Environmental groups say that expressed in millions of cubic meters and kilowatt-hours, these demands could strain fragile Alpine hydrology and carbon budgets.
Organizers and the governmental company Simico argue the Games mainly reuse existing venues and that some new works will deliver long-term benefits for residents — better roads, parking and upgraded facilities that they say will be useful well after the closing ceremony. Simico did not respond to requests about specific sustainability concerns.
Locals are divided. Some welcome investment, but many are skeptical about the scale and character of change. Roberta Zanna, leader of Cortina’s opposition party, contrasts today’s plans with the 1956 Olympics when athletes and spectators traveled mostly by train, runs depended on natural snow and an ice-skating event took place on a frozen lake. “It was a time when we could think about growing the town,” she says. Now, Zanna argues, the emphasis on construction, artificial snow and luxury hotels risks eroding local identity as the climate that once supported winter sports recedes.
Luxury boutiques, sponsor branding and influencer-driven tourism amplify the disconnect between heritage and development. Sites such as Lake Sorapis — a turquoise jewel of the mountains — can draw thousands in a single day, turning quiet trails into crowded selfie spots and accelerating overtourism.
Conservationists warn that some changes are effectively permanent: paving meadows for parking, widening roads, and concrete structures inside old forests alter ecological dynamics and the visual character of the landscape in ways that are hard to reverse.
As the opening ceremony approaches, Cortina’s tableau is telling: cranes and scaffolding, corporate logos on chairlift pylons, and plastic ice sculptures in the square — a staged winter scene in a landscape whose natural snow is growing scarce. Whether the Milano-Cortina Games will be remembered for genuine stewardship of mountain ecosystems or for accelerating development in a vulnerable region will be decided after the medals are awarded — by which projects remain, how well ecosystems recover, and whether full assessments and protections are enforced in the aftermath.