Implications of Rural Abandonment for Biocultural Landscapes
Every landscape on Earth is influenced to some degree by people, and in turn, societies and their cultures are shaped by landscapes and nature. Here, we tell the story of a biocultural landscape in southwestern Spain where the connection between nature and people is deep, and how local communities perceive the impact of rural abandonment on their lifestyle.
Las Hurdes is a rural region located at the northern end of the province of Cáceres in Extremadura, Spain. This region covers an area of 470 square kilometres. It is characterized as a relatively high mountain region with low population density. Las Hurdes is currently designated as a Site of Community Importance of the European Union. This designation means that the biogeographical region contributes significantly to the maintenance or restoration of natural habitats and biodiversity.
Las Hurdes is a beautiful region created by traditional land uses, including crop and vegetable production in irrigated terrace gardens, fruit tree orchards, and animal husbandry, especially goats. Here, cultural practices, knowledge and traditions have enabled societies to develop unprecedented capabilities to transform the ecological systems that sustain them.
The harsh climate and site conditions forced people to create a highly adapted cultural landscape (such as specific irrigation channels and terraces in the landscape to avoid erosion) that enabled integrated use of the whole range of natural resources. However, as in many areas of the Mediterranean region, rural abandonment is a process promoting important changes in the landscapes and imposing sustainability challenges for rural and urban populations.
The population of las Hurdes has been declining since the 1980s, and local authorities see no end of this trend. The few employment opportunities in the region require mainly unqualified labor and can be found in construction, the services sector, and to a lesser extent in agriculture. Yet, this area is rich in both biological diversity as well as cultural diversity, based on the intricate relationships between people and nature. This is evident from the wide traditional knowledges associated with biodiversity, such as the use of plants for medicinal purposes, traditional food recipes associated with local plants or cultural associations with the landscapes.
Why understanding local narratives is important
In this region, following patterns repeated in the Mediterranean Basin and in Europe, the de-coupling of human activities and practices from natural systems has resulted in weakened human nature connections; this means that people feel more disconnected and situated further away from nature. As a result, many people have ceased to perceive that their well-being depends on the preservation of natural and healthy ecosystems. This is also connected to an increasing polarization of society, where the urban population, which is more decoupled from nature, demands the protection of biodiversity and natural processes much more than the rural population, which lives closer to nature. It this context, it is critical to understand the different connections that local communities establish to landscapes, and specially to disentangling the reasons why local people perceive abandonment as a problem or a solution.
Understanding how locals perceive and value rural abandonment is important because it provides insights about the territory from a local point of view. In particular, the knowledge and practices of local communities are increasingly considered fundamental to the long-term sustainability of intervention efforts. Rural abandonment has been identified as having a positive for biodiversity and the landscape by previous scientific literature. However, it is also true that some studies have suggested that abandonment can imply negative effects on people living in the area and their well-being. With this in mind, we wanted to explore how local communities in Las Hurdes perceive rural abandonment by understanding their social perceptions and narratives.
Perceived drivers of rural abandonment
Our results showed that the main perceived drivers of rural abandonment in Las Hurdes include socio-economic factors, such as the increasingly low prices for local agricultural products (mostly connected to global markets and large-scale demand for products), the decreasing attractiveness of rural lifestyles for a substantial part of the local population (linked to processes of urbanization and socio-economic development), or the loss and aging of the population (linked to processes of rural–urban migration). In addition, our results underlined the role of cultural drivers in land abandonment as observed by local communities, particularly in relation to young people.
Consequences of rural abandonment
Additionally, our results disentangled how local people recognize multiple ecological, social, and cultural consequences of land abandonment that have negative impacts on their well-being.
We found that people overwhelmingly considered land abandonment as a cause of serious environmental and societal problems, ultimately leading to an erosion of biocultural diversity in the region.
This means that local people recognize that land abandonment provokes the loss of cultural values such as loss of local identity, cultural heritage or traditional knowledge associated with the region. In particular, we found evidence of the importance that local communities attach to traditional farming in our study area, as highlighted by their appreciation of its social, cultural, and environmental values. Our findings demonstrated how respondents perceived that managed agricultural landscapes provide a wider range of nature’s contributions to people (NCP, i.e., all the contributions, both positive and negative, of living nature to the quality of life for people) compared to abandoned landscapes (see figure 2).
Emerging trade-offs and narratives
We identified four groups of local narratives, each centered on different negative outcomes of rural abandonment. All these narratives centered negative ideas, such as a defeatist reaction toward land abandonment, including the belief that people became more comfortable, less hardworking, and indifferent towards land abandonment. A second narrative was focused on a socio-demographic changes, covering the conception of land abandonment associated with depopulation, rural–urban migration, linked to the loss of job opportunities, and lack of generational replacement. This narrative was associated with the increase of wildfires, that are linked to the increase of vegetation and lack of management. Finally, an emotional reaction - comprising items strongly connected with emotions, such as disillusionment, anger, and sadness - and a productivity complaint — connected to the lack of economic profitability — were the other two public narratives.
Future challenges for the region
Many rural agricultural landscapes in the Mediterranean region are currently experiencing profound transformations, leading to either intensification or abandonment. Our findings highlights different ways in which local people are affected by land abandonment in Las Hurdes region. Clearly, a vast majority of respondents experienced negative consequences from rural abandonment in terms of the nature’s contributions to people, economic development, and on their well-being.
To increase the sustainability and future resilience of rural landscapes, strategies to balance nature conservation and the preservation of cultural values of local people will be key.
We call to prevent land abandonment by addressing the demand of local communities for economic support for their traditional agricultural activities, or by implementing policies and strategies to avoid rural depopulation in the area. Other strategies to counteract land abandonment should focus on policy inputs to preserve agricultural productions and add value to local products, as well as to conserve the natural and cultural values that these areas provide.
Further reading
Full study: Quintas-Soriano, C., Torralba, M., García-Martín, M., Plieninger, T. 2023. Narratives of land abandonment in a biocultural landscape of Spain. Regional Environmental Change, 23, 144. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-023-02125-z
Quintas-Soriano, C., Brandt, J., Baxter, C.V. et al. A framework for assessing coupling and de-coupling trajectories in river social-ecological systems. Sustain Sci 17, 121–134 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-01048-0
Riechers, M., Martín-López, B. Fischer, J. Human–nature connectedness and other relational values are negatively affected by landscape simplification: insights from Lower Saxony, Germany. Sustain Sci 17, 865–877 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-00928-9
