Environmental History 9

Mauro Varotto

Luca Bonardi

Paolo Tarolli Editors

World Terraced

Landscapes:

History,

Environment,

Quality of Life

Environmental History

Volume 9

Series editor

Mauro Agnoletti, Florence, Italy

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10168

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96815-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018957637

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

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practices carried out by human activities. Examples of these practices are the incorrect, imbalanced, and unsustainable use of natural resources, as well as untenable development models, which do not consider long-term impacts or “side effects” of the activities conducted. Concerning the rural territory, the development model promoted in the last decades has not only shown to be ineffective to solve the economic problems of many rural areas, but also contributed to the loss of cultural values associated with rural communities and environmental degradation. This has brought to the loss of valuable land use systems and landscapes shaped by several generations of farmers, to the abandonment of millions of hectares of farmed land, and to urbanization processes, creating social degradation and increasing urban sprawl.

As one of the human activities that have a direct relationship with nature and environment, agriculture is often considered as the driver of the negative trend that is being followed, representing the greatest immediate threat to species, soil, and ecosystems. In fact, unsustainable farming practices result in land conversion leading to soil erosion and degradation, habitat loss, genetic erosion, inefficient use of water, pollution, impacting biodiversity and human life. Nevertheless, when agriculture is practiced in a sustainable way, it can preserve the landscape and biocultural diversity, protect watersheds, and improve soil health and water quality. The use of sustainable ecological practices, such as terracing, is a key feature distinguishing resilient agricultures developed over centuries, based on long experience and proven traditions. This kind of farming may be considered as less productive from modern-intensive systems, but it has ensured sustainable yield over time, thanks to time-tested technologies and traditional know-hows, using reduced external energy inputs. Terraces, with their incredible variety of forms, material, and design, can be surely considered one of the best examples of sustainable agricultural practices and of the co-adaptation of a community to difficult and changing environments. They provide many services to the ecosystem, a huge agrobiodiversity, ancestral knowledge transmitted through generations, and strong cultural and social values.

The identification and conservation of terraced systems can be described at international, regional, and national levels. Considering the United Nations, the cultural landscapes nominated in the UNESCO World Heritage List, developed in 1992, include some terraced landscapes listed as examples of outstanding universal values. Starting in 2002, also the FAO developed a program named Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS), expressly designed to protect traditional agricultural landscapes. Today, the FAO Agricultural Heritage program includes 50 landscapes across the world in Asia, Africa, Europe, Central and South America, and at least 17 of them have terraces. While UNESCO does not specifically address “agriculture” in the definitions of cultural landscapes, the FAO criteria are based on agriculture and consider culture, traditional knowledge, food production, agrobiodiversity, and landscape the main criteria for the designation of the sites. The GIAHS became an official program of the FAO only in 2015, after almost 13 years spent as a research project. The rapid growth of nominated sites occurred in the last few years confirms the growing interest for this topic form the agricultural sector.

At the regional level, it is worth mentioning the European Landscape Convention which offers an opportunity to include these systems in the national policies for landscape planning and conservation. Some European Countries, such as Slovenia, developed specific research programs focusing on terraced landscapes as cultural values, as also the Register of Slovenian Cultural Heritage, which is a central repository of data on heritage maintained by the Slovenian Ministry of Culture, where we can find examples of terraced landscapes. In Italy, specific legislation for landscape protection developed since 1922, but the National Code for Cultural Heritage developed in 2004 does not provide any specific protection for agricultural landscapes, while the return of the vegetation on abandoned farmed land is protected. In 2010, the Ministry of Agriculture developed the National Register of Historical Rural Landscapes and Traditional Agricultural Practices, with the aim of including them into rural development strategies. At the moment, 6 landscapes out of 15 listed in the register have terraces included. It is worth mentioning that also China, in 2012, as also Korea and Japan, developed a list of protected agricultural heritage sites, meant also to provide a tentative list for applying to the FAO GIAHS program. In the current situation, traditional planning and conservation tools only based on restrictions are not the best policy for maintaining terraced landscapes, while the inclusion of these systems in rural development strategies would be the best solution in combination with protection. High-quality food production associated with high-quality landscapes may also offer new opportunities for territories not suited for industrial production, especially when coupled with sustainable tourism. This might also favor the survival of rural communities who are the ones retaining the knowledge to maintain these systems.

This book collects a wide range of reviewed research material, showing a growing interest of the scientific community for this topic, providing also new research material. Thanks to the activity of the International Terraced Landscapes Alliance (ITLA), as well as to the passionate work of spontaneous groups of practitioners materialized in the last few years in many rural territories, the knowledge associated with terraces can survive. The hope is that a transdisciplinary scientific approach, together with local communities and the support of public policies, can effectively help to maintain an active role of these systems in the society and the economy. In this respect, the environmental history series of Springer really welcome this book, hoping that it will meet the same success of other works already published.

10 Agricultural Terraces in Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

José Manuel Pérez Sánchez

Part II Towards a Multifunctional Vision of Terraced Landscapes

11 Mapping Agricultural Terraces in Italy. Methodologies Applied

in the MAPTER Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Francesco Ferrarese, Salvatore Eugenio Pappalardo, Alberto Cosner, Stefano Brugnaro, Kaodi Alum, Angelica Dal Pozzo

and Massimo De Marchi

12 Terraced Landscapes: Land Abandonment, Soil Degradation,

and Suitable Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Paolo Tarolli, Davide Rizzo and Gerardo Brancucci

13 Health, Seeds, Diversity and Terraces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

Salvatore Ceccarelli

14Comparative Studies on Pattern and Ecosystem Services of the Traditional Rice Agricultural Landscapes

in East Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

Yuanmei Jiao, Toshiya Okuro, Kazuhiko Takeuchi, Luohui Liang

and Xuan Gao

16Economic Analysis of the Traditional Cultural Terraced Olive-Growing Landscape and Participatory

Planning Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

Biancamaria Torquati, Lucio Cecchini, Sonia Venanzi

and Giulia Giacchè

19Innovative Practices and Strategic Planning on Terraced Landscapes with a View to Building New Alpine

Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Federica Corrado and Erwin Durbiano

20 Planning, Policies and Governance for Terraced Landscape:

A General View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 Enrico Fontanari and Domenico Patassini