Chapter 20
Planning, Policies and Governance for Terraced Landscape: A General View
Enrico Fontanari and Domenico Patassini
Abstract Guidelines for planning, policies and governance are suggested by class of terraced landscapes taking into consideration the main features of geographic domains and environmental contexts. Dealing with irreversibility, reversibility and development processes the guidelines can help the communities to adopt integrated strategies based on an effective institutional design. Input and basic information are provided in the 3rd International Congress on Terraced Landscapes (Italy, 6th–15th October 2016) by the working groups “Rules and policies” held in Trento/Rovereto and “Agronomic and Social Innovation” held in Valstagna, Canale di Brenta (Vicenza).
20.1Three Landscapes
The terraced landscape (TL) is a heritage of humanity, which needs no awards. It has been around for thousands of years to witness how humans, aware of geographical and climatic conditions, have built basic infrastructure to develop agriculture and the foundations of their settlements.
In considering their life cycle, aside from the constructive, production and management features, recurring censuses or national surveys clearly point to three classes of TL. The first class involving irreversible degradation (TL1), the second with evidence of reversibility (TL2), while the third showing different types of development (TL3).
Irreversible degradation affects a relative small portion of the terraced land where maintenance conditions are very bad, and reconstruction is either unlikely or impossible. Here, the degraded infrastructure is usually accompanied by a
E. Fontanari (&) D. Patassini
IUAV University Venice, Venice, Italy e-mail: enrico.fontanari@iuav.it
D. Patassini
e-mail: domenico.patassini@iuav.it
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socio-economic or cultural crisis triggered by natural or man-made disasters, or by a final collapse of the local communities (Diamond 2005).
The TL belonging to the second class is often located in a less dramatic contexts: where degradation may be less severe, within contextual conditions that may be either a bit better or worse. The best maintenance conditions can be coupled with a bad socio-economic situation: the TL can in such case be considered as a latent resource, as a source or factor of development. In favourable conditions, the TL can be a source that boosts the local economy: a development factor that can benefit from efficient production combinations.
Attempts to reverse or reuse the existing infrastructural stock can be made for different purposes. In some cases, old mixed cultivation or production practices (with related technologies) can be re-discovered; in others, they may be updated in terms of the mix and the technologies. Reversibility processes should confer a plurality of meanings and values to TLs that in brief can be said to lead to ecological benefits, circular economies (Martins 2016) and the inclusion of TL within spatial frames (ecological, infrastructural or cultural).
The third class is apparently the least problematic, being structurally sound and fully or partially used for productive purposes. In this case, TLs host specialized productions (mostly monocultures) with high yield/surface unit, which continue old traditions or start new ones (replanting, etc.). Yet, due to the monoculture approach, TL3 can generate a negative impact, increasing health and environmental risks as well as seriously compromising the local biodiversity (Weitzman 2000).
From an economic (or better, financial) perspective, TL2 suffer from a relative marginality, being partially or totally “off market”. On the contrary, TL3s are economically performative and, based on their production, they supply specific market segments. If marginality usually feeds informality, as well as practices of shared and cooperative economy, the TL3 cultural specialization, to develop, requires advanced forms of management and marketing.
TL2s are influenced by a dual thrust: by those who try to bring them back to the market rules as the only foreseeable chance, while others who prefer to keep them out, recognizing their contribution in terms of environmental performance, circular economy and institutional building: performances that the market finds hard to acknowledge with its price system. The two approaches may trigger conflicts, and the conflicts vary according to the contexts. If within TL3 efficiency is measured on specific crop yields, in TL2 yield is only one of the components. Additionally, the overall efficiency of TL3 should be adjusted (or corrected) by internalizing the above-mentioned impacts at current prices.
Planning, policies and governance issues therefore vary greatly depending on the irreversibility, reversibility or development conditions of the three landscapes.
Physical and strategic planning contributes to designing a spatial structure that inserts TL as a physical component. It also defines the rules, regulations and procedures of land management. From an environmental perspective, and with the help of policies, planning also helps to achieve ecological balance sheets (Mang et al. 2016).
The policies relate to knowledge, training, innovation, financial and fiscal aspects, and to the practices for a circular economy. They may also interact with
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planning on cross-cutting themes such as land management, accessibility, labour market, welfare and so on.
Governance should help improve the relations between formal and informal activities, community and administrative bodies, but it may help to design an institutional framework capable of connecting planning and policies for each of the three TL classes.
The three types of landscape are rarely recognized as such through ad hoc surveys, local research on agricultural landscapes and by the time series of land cover maps.
20.2Crisis and Opportunity
We live in a time of crisis (at least in Europe) in which slow growth affects investments in infrastructure and buildings, household consumption, public and private saving. The crisis pushes people to look at the built heritage, its tangible and intangible components, and to acknowledge and extract values from existing assets (see, for evidence, the Annual Reports and Newsletters of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restauration of Cultural Property, ICCROM).
The different TLs are a great cultural heritage of notable economic value: TL is memory, a “love bond” among generations, often of unique aesthetic value, but also fixed capital with distinct social and physical features. Legislative and operational tools are therefore needed to be able to fully appreciate the values of such heritage, which also encourage revitalization practices that allow existing values to emerge. The reuse and revitalization are particularly urgent in the areas where an economic crisis intersects environmental degradation (correlated to climate changes) and social phenomena such as the new migratory patterns due to geopolitical dynamics.
In order to fully appreciate the role that terraces play as infrastructures for the maintenance of a living territory, TL heritage should be regarded as a real eco-systemic (capital) asset and a component of the natural capital (Costanza et al. 1997).
In designing and operating a possible revitalization scenario, some strategic actions deserve special attention. Firstly, existing regulatory devices need to be simplified to stimulate planning, territorial and economic policies geared at putting the marginal TL at stake. The message here is not “no rules”, nor is it “by the rules” (as if every action were an obligation), but “only with rules” that can power a social discourse on TL. A second action that may, to some extent, be linked to the first one, would reclaim (wherever possible) TL1s from a state of neglect and abandonment in which they might be forced forever. The third concerns, in particular, TL2 and TL3: supporting attempts of reversibility in TL2 and qualifying TL3 specializations from a sustainable ecological perspective.
But can legal moves, regulations, and policies help this process?
The work undertaken for the Third World Meeting on Terraced Landscapes, in particular, on innovation, rules and policies in the Brenta Canal (Carpané-
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Valstagna) and Rovereto/Trento has produced many ideas. The first problem to solve, at least in Italy (but the problem exists even in other countries), is the fragmentation of administrative powers between the three Ministries1 in dealing with TL from different perspectives: cultural, environmental and productive. Yet, this issue raises another, perhaps more important point: how to recognize or create renewed interest for the local management, where four major issues (institutional, environmental, economic and aesthetic) intertwine naturally and on a daily basis, but where conflicts between contemporary and customary legal systems also emerge, although in ever-weaker ways. Management of this issue makes up the DNA of the local communities, who live “in” and “off” terraced landscapes, who suffer degradation, but above all who know how to reap the benefits (if any). It is therefore crucial to create an effective “polity” environment and, to do that, it is perhaps necessary to step back. The key issue here is not to recognize the domain of public policies (policy), neither the power games (politics): but rather, the main problem may be the occupation of a “political space” (polity). That may be done by TL communities, with significant cultural side effects. Whenever TL communities make polity, the benefits of advocacy and deliberative planning is likely to become more obvious.
20.3New Practices, Rules or De-regulation?
In observing the lessons from individual practices of re-appropriation of abandoned places or in catching the signals coming from the market dynamics, planning and policies for terraced landscape (TL) usually come very late (if they are not entirely missing). Local authorities are often inattentive to issues within their competencies, such as the management of public property or civic uses, restoration and maintenance rules, incentives or taxation and the creation of social partnerships.
The delay is due to several factors. Let us consider the two most important causes. The first has to do with the difficulty in interpreting TL values in territorial lifecycles. TL values change economically and geographically, depending on whether their location is central or marginal. If central, TL may often involve intense and specialized processes of exploitation. They can also become part of a very competitive game, whenever value-added agriculture is increasing. If peripheral (marginal), TLs are subject to abandonment and any re-appropriation practice works “off market”. In the first case, the protection of fixed capital (its traditional building quality) is often ensured by business strategies, linked to symbolic, aesthetic and brand factors. In the second, only pilot practices can be found; they are rarely self-reliant, requiring aid, incentives to survive, and rules for landscape protection.
1Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Environment.