Abstract
An Eco-Region (Biodistretto in Italian) is a rural area where different actors work together for the sustainable management of local resources, based on the principles and models of organic farming. Social, environmental, economic as well as ethical dimensions are involved. Eco-Regions are quickly growing in number in the EU and worldwide; different Eco-regions’ types emerged, showing a variety of cultural, physical, socio-economic characteristics and related policies and regulations. The Eco-Regions represent an innovative sustainable integrated rural development approach; their success can be supported by analyzing their basic features and their development dynamics. A balance between a strictly centralized and bureaucratic Eco-Regions management and a bottom-up non-regulated Eco-Regions’ proliferation should be provided to grant the development of community-based resilient initiatives. To this end a monitoring tool, based on the Porter’s Diamond model, involving the local actors in analyzing the Eco-Regions structure and performances, could provide useful. Previous studies defined an Eco-Region monitoring tool, where different shortcomings characterized the analytical framework definition. The present paper goal is therefore to define an improved monitoring tool, more consistent to the Porter’s Diamond model by reviewing the cluster related literature, focusing on the Porter’s approach. The integrations resulting from the literature analysis a major increase in the indicators directly related to the original Porter’s approach and neglected in the previous studies resulted from the literature analysis; new food security and sovereignty, as well as specifically designed sustainability indicators have also been added. By expanding the pool of indicators, the monitoring tool is more adaptive and able to support sustainable management of Eco-Regions in different contexts.
Highlights
The Eco-Regions represent a relatively recent innovative approach to the integrated territorial and rural development which operationalizes the recent rural policies, where organic farming plays a central role (Schermer, 2006; Stotten et al, 2017).The International Network of Eco-Regions (IN.N.E.R), defines an Eco-Region as “An area where farmers, citizens, touristic operators, associations, and public actors established an alliance for the sustainable management of local resources based on the principles and model of organic farming in order to boost the economic and socio-cultural development of their territory”Monitoring Tool for Eco-Regions (Biodistretto.net, 2020)
An exploratory search is conducted to identify papers related to the Porter approach, focused on their contribution to improve the design of an existing monitoring tool, assessing the clusters performances
For the context of this research, terms related to the concepts of “Eco-Regions,” “Organic Districts,” “Biodistretti,” “Cluster,” “Porter Diamond,” “Organic Agriculture,” “Rural development,” “Performance,” “Classification,” “Sustainability,” “Food sovereignty,” “Food safety,” “Developing Countries,” “Monitoring tool,” “Stage of Development,” “Market Orientation,” “Tourism,” and “Case Studies” were combined using the operators “AND” and “OR,” in order to capture relevant references
Summary
The Eco-Regions represent a relatively recent innovative approach to the integrated territorial and rural development which operationalizes the recent rural policies, where organic farming plays a central role (Schermer, 2006; Stotten et al, 2017).The International Network of Eco-Regions (IN.N.E.R), defines an Eco-Region as “An area where farmers, citizens, touristic operators, associations, and public actors established an alliance for the sustainable management of local resources based on the principles and model of organic farming in order to boost the economic and socio-cultural development of their territory”Monitoring Tool for Eco-Regions (Biodistretto.net, 2020). The International Network of Eco-Regions (IN.N.E.R), defines an Eco-Region as “An area where farmers, citizens, touristic operators, associations, and public actors established an alliance for the sustainable management of local resources based on the principles and model of organic farming in order to boost the economic and socio-cultural development of their territory”. The objectives of Eco-Regions involve, among others, the valorization of the Terroir, the promotion of food sovereignty and of social agriculture, the support of a sustainable organic agriculture development and the promotion of Mixed Farming. An Eco-Region is an example of sustainable food system where the different objectives are clearly defined (Biodistretto.net). The Italian version of the term Eco-Regions, Bio-distretti (Organic farming districts), derives from its association to the Marshallian concept of industrial districts. Adopting the term EcoRegion was chosen by IN.N.E.R. following the idea of broadening the concept of organic and refer to a more ecological approach, and to avoid the risk of possible confusion with industrial districts, mostly focused on manufacturing activities in its Marshallian version
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