Abstract
Changes in agriculture, including simultaneous intensification and abandonment, have significantly shaped the evolution of rural areas. The assessment of resilience in agricultural systems could provide insights into the ability of many rural areas to survive and regain competitiveness following disturbances. The aim of this study is to use the adaptive cycle heuristic as a diagnostic tool to study dynamics of change in two agricultural sectors (durum wheat/sheep and goat farming) in the Basilicata region of Southern Italy over the last seventy years. The heuristic was applied through a participatory approach in a community of stakeholders who have conceived, in collaboration with researchers, the Manifesto “Let’s Think Basilicata” as a regional instrument of analysis and a laboratory of ideas and development of proposals. Despite some methodological difficulties, the adaptive cycle heuristic proved useful to describe processes of change in the socio-ecological system and could have enormous potential in shaping policy instruments for rural areas. However, much greater research is needed, both in terms of theory and methodology, before policy impacts on resilience in socio-ecological systems can be fully understood.
Highlights
Agriculture, understood as a multi-functional activity that connects man and the environment and gives rise to coupled human and natural systems [1], is experiencing an era of rapid change and growing uncertainty
We present the results of a research carried out by the University of Basilicata in collaboration with local representatives from various sectors of production of the Basilicata region of Southern Italy, which is considered a model of the dynamics at play in rural territories
The way the adaptive cycle heuristic was used within the Manifesto “Let’s Think Basilicata” was in line with the thinking of Holling and Gunderson [21]
Summary
Agriculture, understood as a multi-functional activity that connects man and the environment and gives rise to coupled human and natural systems [1], is experiencing an era of rapid change and growing uncertainty. Agricultural systems are facing a series of threats, including climate change, land degradation, price volatility and intensification processes, which put their long-term sustainability into question. Many areas of the world are facing the abandonment of agricultural activities in rural areas. The phenomenon is extremely complex both in terms of the nature of driving forces, which determine the rate of abandonment of agricultural activities, and in terms of its social, economic and environmental effects. Parody et al [6], for example, studying the relationship between landscape changes and number of species, question more critical positions which tend to characterize land abandonment and afforestation mostly as a threat for biodiversity because they usually go together with landscape homogenization and have negative effects for open-habitat species of conservation value [7]
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