Mountain farming in the making: approaches to Alpine rural agro-food challenges in Trentino

The current paper belongs to a set of ongoing multi-scalar and trans-disciplinary research studies investigating potential approaches for regenerating rural areas in the Alpine areas of Italy, which have been suffering for years from underused phenomena (Balducci, 2019; Gretter et al., 2018a). The paper focuses mainly on the territory of the Autonomous Province of Trento to investigate how farmers face the current challenges in different ways while looking for sustainable and viable systems from the ecological and socio-economic perspectives (Bender & Haller, 2017). Trentino’s cultural context reflects a long tradition of specific law rules, which have granted a degree of self-government capabilities in various sectors such as territorial planning and land use policies, culture and school system, or social services (Gretter et al., 2018b). Rather than present specific results based on deep quantity-qualitative analysis, the goal of the manuscript is to overview the peculiar features of this alpine territory, opening a series of inputs of reflection and discussions. Some have already been locally activated, but most must be addressed in a broader and systemic approach, involving a more comprehensive series of stakeholders, moving from public authorities to citizens. In this manuscript, we highlight ongoing experiences that the Trentino Agro-food value chain faces today and how this impact the territory and its cultural landscapes’ preservation

Developing a panarchy model of landscape conservation and management of alpine-mountain grassland in Northern Italy.

This paper explores methods of applying resilience theory to a case study of natural resource management and the cultural landscape of upland and alpine pasture in northern Italy. We identify that the close interaction between alpine pastures and its managers offers a strong fit with the concept of a social-ecological system that maintains the cultural landscape. We first considered a descriptive approach looking historically at socio-economic development in the study area. We explored whether this can be related to resilience phenomena such as regime shifts, thresholds and/or regime stability through adaptive processes. However, we found it difficult at this overarching level to conceptually combine natural and social capital of alpine pastures and their managers in any quantitative way. We also interpreted our data through considering economic, social and ecological information as acting within separate but interacting domains. This led us to construct conceptual models of adaptive cycles to describe the alpine mountain grassland ecosystem of our study site and to conclude that a panarchy model can offer a powerful metaphor for its ecological dynamics. This has practical implications both for the management of Natura 2000 interest and the maintenance of the cultural landscape in which this Alpine interest occurs. We suggest that Resilience theory through its dynamic approach of interacting scales of adaptive cycles offers useful insights into the resource management (of valued cultural and natural attributes) but that care is needed in distinguishing between descriptive metaphor and predictive model or "real" system.natural resource management, natural and social capital

Contribution of Conceptual-Drawing Methods to Raise Awareness on Landscape Connectivity: Socio-Environmental Analysis in the Regional Context of Trentino (Italy)

This paper deals with landscape understanding and connectivity from an ecological as well as a human perspective. It is based on a broader research study known as EIT Climate-KIC SATURN (System and sustainable Approach to virTuous interaction of Urban and Rural LaNdscapes) co-funded by the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT), Climate-KIC and the institutions participating in this project. The aim of the study was to explore how landscape connectivity is perceived, on urban and regional scales, by decision-makers and key stakeholders as well as the impact this can have on building sustainable cities. The paper used a series of drawing and visualization workshops, community engagement methods, and participatory tools to identify the connection communities and decision-makers have with their landscape surroundings as well as the impact landscape connectivity has on our health and wellbeing. Through a series of specifically designed workshops following a landscape visioning approach, the paper explored how drawings and visualizations can support decision-makers to create a vision that addresses landscape connectivity, considering the socio-ecological factors in their area and creating a holistic regional approach between urban and rural landscapes. The study concludes that landscape connectivity is of major importance when creating visions for a sustainable future; however, a better connection between ecological and human elements needs to be established to improve landscape design

Agricoltura di montagna in divenire: Approcci alle sfide agroalimentari in Trentino

Il presente lavoro si colloca nell’alveo di ricerche multi-scalari e trans-disciplinari in corso che indagano i potenziali approcci per la rigenerazione delle aree rurali nelle Alpi italiane, che soffrono da anni di fenomeni di abbandono e sottoutilizzo (Balducci, 2019; Gretter et al., 2018a). Il documento si concentra principalmente sul territorio della Provincia Autonoma di Trento (o per brevità, Trentino) per indagare come gli agricoltori affrontano le sfide attuali in modi diversi, cercando di realizzare sistemi sostenibili e vitali dal punto di vista ecologico e socio-economico (Bender & Haller, 2017). Il contesto culturale del Trentino riflette una lunga tradizione di specifiche norme di legge, che hanno concesso un certo grado di capacità di autogoverno in vari settori come la pianificazione territoriale e le politiche di utilizzo del territorio, la cultura e il sistema scolastico o i servizi sociali (Gretter et al., 2018b). L’obiettivo dell’articolo, più che presentare risultati specifici basati su una profonda analisi quantitativa-qualitativa, è quello di inquadrare le peculiarità di uno specifico territorio alpino, aprendo una serie di spunti di riflessione e discussione. Alcune sono già state attivate a livello locale, ma la maggior parte deve essere affrontata con un approccio più ampio e sistemico, che coinvolga una serie maggiore di parti interessate, passando dalle autorità pubbliche ai cittadini. In questo articolo, evidenziamo le esperienze in corso che la filiera agroalimentare trentina affronta oggi e come queste incidono sulla conservazione del territorio e dei suoi paesaggi culturali

Socio-Ecological Connectivity for Productive, Circular and Resilient Territories. The Experience of the "Saturn" EIT Climate-KIC Pan European Project

Since the European conference on Sustainable Cities and Towns happened in Aalborg in 1994 the urgency to promote a more balanced relationship and to enhance the reconnection between urban and rural areas became a matter of discussion in research and policy-making. A further important push towards the implementation of reconnection strategies occurred in 1997 with the European Conference on Rural Development. Nowadays, many stakeholders involved in territorial and landscape planning, in order to implement a new relationship between cities and countryside, aim to remove rural areas from margins, to bring citizens closer to the urgent need to safeguard the entire natural ecosystem, and to preserve rural areas and the ecosystem services they provide. The food system can be a key of reconnection between urban and rural areas and has a great impact on materials and energy flows in the metabolism of a city-region. The contribution will explore the spatial transformation of urban and rural landscapes in the city of Trento through a multidisciplinary lens on social dynamics and the governance of food policies

Trento Social Commons. Coinvolgimento comunitario come modalità per una nuova relazione fisica e culturale tra spazi urbani, periferici e rurali

L'espansione delle aree urbanizzate ha pesantemente modificato le caratteristiche dei paesaggi culturali in molti paesi europei. Anche i territori montani sono stati interessati da tali processi. A causa delle loro peculiari caratteristiche sociali e topografiche lì gli effetti sono stati maggiori rispetto ad altri territori. Inoltre, il processo di espansione dell'urbanizzazione nelle Alpi è fortemente correlato con dinamiche temporanee che dipendono dai flussi turistici, dalla creazione di nuovi spazi di mobilità, dallo sviluppo economico e dalle dinamiche residenziali.In un contesto di estrema scarsità di spazi come nelle Alpi, la ricerca da parte degli abitanti della prossimità della natura a case e aree residenziali, mette sotto pressione gli strumenti di governance territoriale e fa scaturire situazioni conflittuali.Partendo da altre esperienze nei rapporti tra spazi urbani e periferici, questo articolo propone i tipici modelli di governance comunitaria rurale come soluzione in grado di rafforzare gli interessi collettivi rispetto a quelli individuali. Questi modelli possono essere replicati su scala urbana da parte delle autorità pubbliche. L’applicazione nella città di Trento ha dimostrato come i cittadini - anche laddove non sono comunemente applicati specifici modelli di governance collettiva - sono in grado, all’interno di specifiche azioni, di generare soluzioni sistemiche e auto-sviluppare modelli associativi e cooperativi per rigenerare gli spazi “aperti” intorno alla città. Tali esempi possono essere considerati dei “prototipi” da estendere ad altri territori urbani (alpini) seguendo un approccio che la città di Trento sta attuando attraverso diversi strumenti di politica partecipativa o attraverso progetti europei

Decision Making in City Planning: Processes of Visioning and Stakeholders Engagement and their Relation to Sustainable Land-Use in the SATURN Project

The EIT Climate-KIC SATURN project deals with rural-urban territories, their landscapes and environmental challenges. The land of our cities and regions is fragmented and prone to several challenges in terms of ecology, governance and social coherence. As a result of unregulated overlapping of different land uses and complex governance patterns, landscape fragmentation creates severe challenges in the ways the land is perceived, identified and therefore managed. The SATURN consortium is working on different models to help address the governance and decision-making process and support on a policy level by applying holistic ideas of visioning and stakeholder engagement at a city scale. The diversity of the three hubs (Birmingham in central England, Gothenburg in western Sweden, and Trentino in northern Italy) is reflected by their approaches to stakeholders’ engagement and visioning processes as well as especially adopted activities in each location. Within the SATURN project, we are investigating how these approaches could change perceptions and impact on landscape strategic actions. Through a series of especially designed workshops on landscape visioning and stakeholder engagement, the project aims to create a toolbox supporting urban, peri-urban and regional planning. This paper reports on the visioning and stakeholder mapping and analysis tools, and shares examples where these processes were tested during the broader SATURN scheme. Results demonstrate how the visioning exercise has changed public perceptions about an area and how this has affected the decision-making process of each city towards a more effective planning of sustainable landscapes. The stakeholder engagement activity demonstrates the importance of “mapping and analysis” of the various actors involved in a city and the ways a landscape project can effectively engage with them and seek further collaboration. Questions on how the results differ in cases where the stakeholder engagement process focused on a broad policy level or targeted specific actions for a certain region are being explored. Both the visioning and stakeholder engagement tools are subject to a holistic approach and a collaborative and open process between the stakeholders and the trainers, allowing the participants to build a vision for their regions and be one-step closer to systemic change