Panel 8. Paper 8.1 Tourism, Dams and Greed: Lessons from the destruction of a rural cultural landscape in Crete

Four thousand years of shaping the landscape, developing sustainable agricultural practices and products, and forming a symbiotic relationship with ecological systems in the Aposelemis Valley of Crete has been disrupted due to the building of a large dam in the heart of that landscape. The politics and decision-making that resulted in the building and implementation of this dam are already documented and analyzed in a recent paper (Chifos, et al, 2019). This paper re-examines what happened in this Valley from the perspective of the cultural/heritage advocates and where the barriers to protecting and maintaining this landscape were and still are. This thriving rural landscape with five inhabited old villages, was recognized as a Natura site, a Ramsar site, was experiencing new archeological finds from Minoan, Roman, and Venetian eras, as well as being championed by local cultural associations, an agricultural cooperative, active farmers and shepherds, and environmentalists. Every such place cannot become a designated cultural landscape through UNESCO, IUCN or other international or national programs. It is not clear that such designations would have stopped the momentum of this water resource management outcome. How can active living traditional rural landscapes survive conflicts with the demands of hyper-tourism, urban growth, EU policies, and centralized governance? This analysis of the Crete case provides an opportunity to identify the weaknesses and world views that left this rural landscape vulnerable to such destruction. Local and regional strategies, as well as the role of local decision-making, that could have prevented or lessened this destruction are discussed, contributing to the ongoing search for how to empower active living rural cultural landscapes to co-exist in a world of rapid change

Without proper planning, large-scale industrial growth can be a curse rather than a blessing for rural communities

For decades, rural communities in the US have sought to attract industrial development via tax and zoning incentives and other subsidies. But what happens in the decades which follow after a large company establishes itself? Sudeshna Ghosh and Carla Chifos tracked the effects of Toyota's manufacturing plant on rural counties in Kentucky over three decades. They find that most Toyota-related development occurred in urban rather than rural areas. Rural counties, they write, need to prepare for the positive and negative effects of attracting new large-scale industries

Panel 8. Paper 8.1 Tourism, Dams and Greed: Lessons from the destruction of a rural cultural landscape in Crete

Carla Chifos is Associate Professor of Sustainable Development and Urban Planning at the University of Cincinnati. She has also worked in Southeast Asia with USAID and multiple development agencies and consulting firms on issues of sustainable urban and regional development. At the USEPA, during the Clinton Administration, she was working with the integration of sustainable urban development into all the federal agencies. Her interest and work in rural cultural landscapes stems from years of summer teaching and research programs working on cultural and environmental protection juxtaposed with tourism in Crete, Santorini, Thailand, Indonesia and Brazil.Four thousand years of shaping the landscape, developing sustainable agricultural practices and products, and forming a symbiotic relationship with ecological systems in the Aposelemis Valley of Crete has been disrupted due to the building of a large dam in the heart of that landscape. The politics and decision-making that resulted in the building and implementation of this dam are already documented and analyzed in a recent paper (Chifos, et al, 2019). This paper re-examines what happened in this Valley from the perspective of the cultural/heritage advocates and where the barriers to protecting and maintaining this landscape were and still are. This thriving rural landscape with five inhabited old villages, was recognized as a Natura site, a Ramsar site, was experiencing new archeological finds from Minoan, Roman, and Venetian eras, as well as being championed by local cultural associations, an agricultural cooperative, active farmers and shepherds, and environmentalists. Every such place cannot become a designated cultural landscape through UNESCO, IUCN or other international or national programs. It is not clear that such designations would have stopped the momentum of this water resource management outcome. How can active living traditional rural landscapes survive conflicts with the demands of hyper-tourism, urban growth, EU policies, and centralized governance? This analysis of the Crete case provides an opportunity to identify the weaknesses and world views that left this rural landscape vulnerable to such destruction. Local and regional strategies, as well as the role of local decision-making, that could have prevented or lessened this destruction are discussed, contributing to the ongoing search for how to empower active living rural cultural landscapes to co-exist in a world of rapid change

Using Boomtown Models to Understand the Consequences of Fracking

This chapter reflects on the resource curse and the boom-bust consequences familiar in the rural United States. It presents a case study of Bradford County in Pennsylvania's northern tier, which lies above part of the Marcellus Shale. As largely agricultural Bradford County transforms rapidly with natural gas extraction, boomtown models are compared, with the Bradford County current shale gas boom following along lines of previous energy boomtowns. The new energy development in Bradford County and its communities follows models developed over decades by researchers and planners studying boom and bust trends and development. But in contrast to more typical scenarios, Bradford County responded with new focuses on human capital investments, new partnerships with higher education institutions, and other capacity-building initiatives for local officials and community stakeholders to shift the power balance to community development rather than reactive responses.</p

Public discourse and government action in a controversial water management project: the damming of the Aposelemis River in Crete, Greece

Abstract The politics and practices of decision-making in a large dam project on the Greek island of Crete is investigated through the case study of the Aposelemis Dam, a European Union (EU)-funded development project to supply drinking water to three urban centers and major tourist destinations. Our study employs a modified version of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) evaluation framework. We compare the processes used in Greece with the best practices suggested by the WCD framework. Our study reveals three areas of weakness in this project. First, the political decision to build the dam took place in the absence of reliable hydrological studies and in the face of strong opposition from the residents, local governments, and professional organizations. Second, during the stages of planning, design, implementation, and operation of the project, the Greek government failed to follow transparent procedures in its deliberations. Affected residents and local governments in all the stages of the project were disregarded and mitigation of negative effects was negligible. And, third, the comprehensive sustainable regional development goals of the EU funding were never materialized.</jats:p