Il coinvolgimento delle popolazioni locali nei processi di decision making: esperienze sul campo e primi risultati

Atti su CD-RO

The potential of ecomuseums in strategies for local sustainable development in rural areas

ABSTRACT Given the increasing polarization between intensively used and abandoned land and the profound social, cultural, ecological and economic consequences of this transformation, landscape planning can provide a strategic approach through which to improve sustainability. A methodological approach to the cultural landscape aimed at devising strategies for local sustainable development is proposed. The approach is based first on a process of analysis and diagnosis of the landscape and the functions it serves for the local community in terms of its needs and expectations. The aim here is to promote communication between researchers and the local community in order to increase its awareness of and participation in local decision-making processes. The method then proceeds to the identification of possible strategies by which this communicative process can be implemented in the promotion of sustainable rural development. In this study we focus on the ecomuseum as an exemplary tool for the concrete realization of the goals established through planning dialogue. The research is carried out in the territory of Comunita` Montana Esino-Frasassi, a rural area in Marche (central Italy). Work in the field is still in progress. KEY WORDS: Cultural landscape, landscape functions, sustainable development, ecomuseu

Le paysage à la croisée des chemins, vers une analyse "géo-économique" de paysages ruraux

For the economist, as for the geographer, the term landscape is polysemic and refers to several concepts. For the economist, the landscape is both a good, instrument that satisfies human needs, and a resource, that can contribute to the economic activity in some circumstances. This good and this resource exhibit characteristics from publics goods or common pool resources when they are consumed, depending on whether their consumption implies (or not) a modification of their use. But they are also goods/resources with private good characteristic on their production side. Moreover, because the landscape is an intermediate between a natural resource and a man-made one, beyond its production with private goods, the question comes about the common action that coordinates this private production.The geographer analyses the landscape through several spatiotemporal scales, with different definitions according to the different schools. The important point for our reasoning is the landscape analysis always starts with the identification of the elements that give structure to this landscape: biophysical components, their dynamics and their ecological functions, tracks of past and present human activities, the landscape social, economic and cultural functions, the representations that actors design. This paper will examine the way the two approaches can enrich each other and how they can both provide structured concepts and indicators for a better understanding of the landscape status in a territory and for its developing. The first step consists in splitting the object "landscape" in elements that can be handled by the two disciplines. Landscape production and evolution are the result of the dynamic interaction of natural elements (biotic and abiotic ones), of human activities that do not intend to produce landscape, intentional production of landscape pieces. The economists is interested in the mechanisms that result in landscape production as an externality or as a intended production. The geographer rebuilds a various spatiotemporal scales the multiple processes that produced the landscapes and analyses their potentialities for the future. In return, the landscapes allows the productions of goods, resources and services (economic concepts), through environmental, economic and cultural functions (geographic concepts), that relate the above elements. The second step mobilizes the two disciplines to produce indicators that describe the mechanisms that end in the production of landscape elements and that characterise the functions of these elements. The disciplines are mobilized interactively : the economics describes the monetary effects from the externalities, the intentional supply chains, provides keys to evaluate the landscape policies, but the spatial dimension of the processes is a theoretical difficulty; the geography, that is not especially interested in the monetary fluxes, mobilizes tools to spatialize the activities and aggregate the intentional and non-intentional effects at different scales. The third step aggregates the above indicators, structures the different scales according to geographic methods and considers the dynamics of landscape supply and consumption. We apply this approach to the landscape of one territory: the Vallesina valley, on the centre of Marche region (Ancona, Italy). The valley is interesting because it's an historical rural area that - starting from the first decades of XX century - has be interested by a strong industrial, urban and infrasructural development. This new dynamics have changed the characteristic landscape and its structuring elements: however the traces of the historical landscape are still present and in the last years they have been recupered and integrated as elements of urban context, with new functions. The case study suggests interesting elements both for the geographers and the economists, showing by one side the dynamics of landscape production, and on the other side the centrality of landscape as heritage and element of local identity on new processes of planning

Evaluation of welfare in Italian poultry breeds based on genetic parameters

Over the last years, control of animal welfare has become a major issue and even a point of contention in aviculture together with the sustainable development of breeding. In fact, in highly intensive livestock farming animals not always express their natural behaviour and they get a stress that reduces the performances both qualitatively and quantitatively. Consequently, there is an increased need to define specific stress markers. The measurement of plasma corticosterone level is widespread in aviculture. Alterations in hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis secretion are associated with an altered animal welfare. However, because of the great number and variability of the stressors in avian breeding, other indicators should be also studied. Also the molecular genetics studies allow to evaluate the stress condition. Mainly in medical field has been pointed out the existence of strong genetic component in the stress predisposition. This is particularly true for the genotype of loci involved with the glucocorticoid hormones function. In human was observed that the regulation of the glucocorticoid receptor gene NR31C (Nuclear Receptor subfamily 3, group C, member 1) expression is involved in the control of depressive syndromes. The aim of the work was to study the response of three different Italian poultry breeds (Ancona, Livorno and Naked neck) to a number of stressors by taking into account genetic markers and, in particular, to define glucocorticoid receptor gene expression in these animals. At this purpose, 180 animals (1 day old) of the three breeds before mentioned (60 for each breed) were raised in stressful conditions: the stress agent was represented by the rearing density (15 heads/m2 or 30 kg/m2). In order to get an indicator of the level of stress suffered by animals, was determined the level of plasma corticosterone at the age of 40 and 80 days. At 81 days all the chickens were slaughtered and samples of liver were collected from each bird, immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at -80\ub0C. From the samples of the liver, total RNA was extracted and utilized for the synthesis of the cDNA necessary for the reactions of real time PCR that quantify the absolute level of expression of the NR31C gene. The reaction was conducted using a pair of specific primers and TaqMan probe. The rate of corticosterolo in the blood was then correlated with the levels of NR31C expression. The study is in progress but this stress indicator, for its genetic derivation, can be considered suitable for a scheme of divergent selection in order to create chicken genetic lines well adapted to different breeding systems. Particularly, for intensive breeding, can be constituted genetic types characterized by a low level of corticosterone and high expression of GR, while, for plain-air rural production, can be useful genetic types with opposite characteristics