Exploring Land Abandonment Effects in the Mediterranean Basin
In many places of the world, rural and agricultural land is becoming abandoned. However, what are the effects of land abandonment on biodiversity and local communities? A new systematic literature review advances to answer those questions.
Fractured old stone ruins, overgrown with plants and trees, the remains of residential buildings and agricultural infrastructure, and old uncultivated terraced landscapes— when traveling in Southern Spain, one can easily follow the gradient from densely settled, lively urban areas towards the more rural environments, in which land is becoming more and more abandoned.
Land abandonment is one of the many processes of land-use change happening all around the Mediterranean, and in many other parts of the world. In Europe alone, approximately 120 Mega hectare of land have been abandoned since the 1990s.
However, what does actually happen when agricultural land is being abandoned? Which social and ecological implications does it have?
Those were the questions that intrigued us when we started working on our review.
Mediterranean ecosystems are facing significant challenges to maintain the supply of food and living space to a growing population while preserving the multifunctionality of agricultural landscapes. In particular, two contrasting and interrelated processes of change are occurring: the abandonment of rural, mountaineous and less economically developed areas on the one side — and agricultural intensification, urbanization and increasing human pressures on the other.
Previous studies have illustrated the complex social and environmental processes leading to the abandonment of land and the large variety of biodiversity outcomes that emerge. However, the effects of abandonment on a broader social-ecological set of ‘nature’s contributions to people’ and ‘good quality of life’ remain unclear.
We were curious about how land abandonment might influence social and cultural aspects, particularly how it affects the welfare of local communities.
In order to cover this gap, we systematically reviewed all scientific literature published in the Mediterranean context with regards to land abandonment effects on nature contributions to people and good quality of life components.
Findings: spatial distribution, types of impacts and relevance
In the literature, land abandonment was mostly described as the abandonment of croplands and traditional practices, such as in terraced landscapes. Some of the most commonly abandoned croplands were olive groves, almond orchards and Mediterranean oak-woodland landscapes (the so-called ‘dehesa’). Most of the studies described land abandonment as a steady trend, however this was not substantiated by data.
The data analyzed showed that most studies focused on the northern fringe of the Mediterranean, while the South was completely ignored. This gap might result from some limitations of the literature review, which only focused on English and Spanish language papers (ignoring literature in other languages). In any case, it thus seems that land abandonment processes in countries outside Europe are invisibilized in (Western) scientific literature.
Our review covered 90 articles, of which a majority evaluated the impact of land abandonment on the ecological dimension (mostly concerning biodiversity effects, soil formation and habitat quality), while only 10 studies measured the effects of abandonment on good quality of life. This indicates a knowledge gap with regards to land abandonment implications for local communities.
In total, 136 effects of land abandonment were recorded. Later analysis revealed the predominance of negative outcomes (38% of the studies), both in terms of nature’s contributions to people and good quality of life, although many studies also reported mixed outcomes (both positive and negative, 31%) and others positive ones (25%).
In the categories cultural/non-material and good quality of life, almost no exclusively positive effects were identified.
On the contrary, the results revealed how land abandonment predominantly impacts local communities through the loss of local identity and sense of place, cultural heritage and local ecological knowledge.
Although some studies reported that the abandonment of landscape could bring some positive effect from the increase of income because of nature tourism, the reality is that most studies indicated negative and mixed effects.
These results indicate that effects from land abandonment are not pointing into one direction only or acting in an isolated way; instead there are multiple underlying factors of land abandonment, which promote diverse effects, and the consideration of the social dimenssion must be taken into account. Thus, in order to avoid a simplistic analysis, it is important to recognize these interrelated variables that play a role in land abandonment processes, as well as their diverse effects.
Future policy strategies for addressing land abandonment
Agricultural land abandonment is a policy challenge: Its management is strongly debated, be it due to concerns about the loss of traditional agricultural and cultural landscapes, or about potential impacts on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people.
However, most studies and policy actions address land abandonment as an agricultural problem.
The lack of focus on social, cultural and well-being aspects highlights the need to look beyond purely ecological implications, and move land abandonment research towards a more social-ecological approach. Including this social dimension can also contribute to a better understanding of its implications for future generations.
Given that land abandonment varies across different socio-cultural contexts, a better understanding of drivers, consequences, and tradeoffs of abandonment is essential. Future research will also require a better grasp of the extent, speed, and the types of land conversion processes, as well as of the specific contexts driving land abandonment.
Future research thus needs to consider land abandonment as a dynamic process driven by a variety of factors, including socio-economic, cultural, environmental and policy-related trends, and spatial-temporal processes, which also affect local communities.
Moreover, we call for a consideration of how land abandonment can both positively and negatively impact ecosystems and local communities — and for greater attention to North African and Middle East countries, where the multiple pathways of abandonment can emerge in a near future.
Further info & contact details
Full study: Quintas-Soriano, C., Buerkert, A., Plieninger, T. 2022. “Effects of land abandonment on nature contributions to people and good quality of life components in the Mediterranean region: A review.” Land Use Policy, 116, 106053.
- Dr. Cristina Quintas-Soriano, Marie Curie Researcher, SocioECOS Lab, University of Almería, cristina.quintas@ual.es
- Prof. Tobias Plieninger, Section Social-Ecological Interactions in Agricultural Systems, Georg-August University Göttingen / University of Kassel, plieninger@uni-goettingen.de
