Historical Irrigation Landscape Systems: Introducing Conservation, Management, and Reuse Experiences and Studies in Rural and Urban Contexts

Water represents a crucial human concern and its role has been critical in driving many social, political, cultural, and economic developments for millennia on a global scale. The accessibility to hydraulic resources contributed to shaping and influencing decision-making (Barnes and Alatout 2012), from everyday life to national-scale supply by governmental bodies. Archaeological research confirmed that the first strategies of water manipulation for irrigation purposes, navigation, and delimitation of borders emerged as early as the Bronze Age in different regions of the world, from China (Zhuang 2017) to Europe (Hein et al. 2020) and from the Near East (Wilkinson 2003) to South America (Ertsen 2010).

The multifaceted nature of water can make it a tool in support of humans or a force against which we should defend, as in the case of storms or floods (Khan et al. 2023). Among others, the control of river flooding and the regulation of irrigation was one of the first problems that humans had to face following the emergence of agriculture. The competition for the use of water has also generated conflicts between human communities, for centuries, including so-called ‘water grabbing’, affecting many African communities (Duvail et al. 2012) or the political tensions following the construction of dams along rivers crossing more countries in the Near East (Marchetti et al. 2020; Shoup 2006) and Central Africa (Yihdego, Rieu-Clarke, and Cascão 2016; Zaina and Tapete 2022). These long-term issues are intertwined with the increasing effects of climate change, recognised as one of the key challenges in the twenty-first century. However, the multiple ways of using water for sustenance has also led communities around the world to establish an intimate link with water and its benefits. Rivers, lakes, and seas have become an integral part of human life and to confirm this deep relationship, stories, traditions, and rituals emerged (Willems and van Schaik 2015). Water has become heritage.

This simple but meaningful assumption was the starting point for building a discussion, as a special issue of Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites (CMAS), on the way communities around the world have dealt and are currently dealing with its preservation and use. To do so, we focused on historical irrigation systems from different landscapes of the world.

Defining Historical Irrigation Landscape Systems (HILS)

Historical irrigation landscape systems (HILS) are paradigmatic examples of sustainable and integrated water management which have been adopted for centuries if not millennia, from Europe to Africa and from Asia to the America, having multiple functions and diverse services (Ruijgrok 2006). For example, they are widely recognised as crucial for supporting local economies as well as for fostering social cohesion and local governance (Scazzosi and Branduini 2020). HILS also plays a critical role in shaping cultural landscapes, thus representing the tangible and intangible heritages for numerous communities, with renowned beneficial effects for local resilience and biodiversity (Antrop 2005).

However, despite their cultural, environmental, and productive values, many of them are threatened by a growing number of hazards including urban sprawl, economic interests, modernisation processes, and abandonment of traditional practices. Over the past 50 years, the lack of understanding of their environmental, economic, and cultural benefits coupled with the growth of cities, as well as the widespread belief that modern irrigation systems are more economically and productively efficient, brought to, among others the modernisation of agriculture, the privatisation of water management and rural exodus (Zaina, Branduini, and Zavvari 2022). The effects are now apparent and widespread in rural, urban, and peri-urban areas. The most tangible ones include the destruction or abandonment of historical irrigation infrastructures, the loss of traditional communal practices and local ecological knowledge, the drop of biodiversity and productivity, the loss of soil fertility, depopulation, and the social and economic marginalisation and degradation of these and neighbouring areas (Branduini et al. 2021).

Over the past decades, a growing number of studies have attempted to contribute to overturn this dramatic and destructive trend, demonstrating how the conservation, management, and reuse of historical irrigation systems helps mitigate the effects of climate change on natural heritage, limit land erosion, allow water availability, and increase biodiversity (Balbo et al. 2020; Branduini, Laviscio, and Scazzosi 2020; Jódar et al. 2022; Wang and Fu 2014). We may therefore define HILS as both a heritage under threat in many parts of the world due to the multiple recent human-induced factors and an active player with a critical role in the mitigation of climate change effects, when responsibly used.

Preserving and Protecting HILS

The necessity for a coordinated effort aiming at the conservation, management, and reuse of HILS has slowly come to the fore, thanks to the initiatives of international institutions, such as UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites), and IFLA (International Federation of Landscape Architects), as well as numerous single or groups of researchers worldwide. As a result, a number of guidelines for preserving and managing historical landscapes (including HILS) have recently emerged like the World Heritage Convention (UNESCO 1992), the European Landscape Convention (European Council 2000) and the Krakow Charter (ICOMOS 2000).

More recently, new studies framed HILS in a new dimension, not only as a passive element of the past to be preserved but also as an active resource to achieve sustainable development and mitigate climate change (Nocca 2017). According to Scazzosi (2020), this kind of heritage should not be seen as a burden for the present but as a resource to build a sustainable future and counteract the growing effects of climate change. These thoughts and debates contributed to the recent development of a comprehensive definition in the ICOMOS-IFLA Principles Concerning Rural Landscape as Heritage (ICOMOS 2017), which takes into account the complex role of historical landscapes. The document recognises them as a resource that can provide raw materials and food, as well as a sense of identity involving economic, environmental, cultural, and social aspects. Furthermore, by perceiving the historical landscape as a system of heritage networks connected by functional, physical, social, and cultural relationships (Zaina et al. 2022; Scazzosi 2018), we may overturn previous paradigms regarding the passive role of the landscape and environment in general, towards an active function in the overall improvement in life quality.

The importance of preserving and reusing HILS has also been stressed by FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) as well as by several UN Sustainable Development Goals (hereafter SDGs). According to ICOMOS SDG Policy Guidance (Labadi et al. 2021), HILS represent an important tangible cultural heritage falling into SDG 11.4 ‘strengthening efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage’. Moreover, the use of water resources and ingenuous hydraulic systems that are often forgotten and underutilised contributes to the scope of SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), and eventually to adjusting climate variability, thus matching the goals of SDG 13 (Climate action). Yet, many HILS are managed through communal initiatives that have been passed down from the past to the present through interactive activities (SDG 4, lifelong learning).

Economic support to the development of scientific methodologies as well as social and political strategies leading to the conservation, management, and reuse of HILS are now growing as demonstrated by the number of calls by the new EU funded Horizon Europe programme, focusing not only on the preservation but also on the reuse of natural and cultural heritage as well as on traditional techniques to counteract the effects of climate change.

Case Studies in Conservation, Management, and Reuse of HILS

We build on current issues and state-of-the-art approaches to develop this special issue for CMAS with a threefold aim:

1. Illustrating the importance of HILS and their connection with urban and rural contexts through relevant global case studies.

2. Demonstrating the significance of the preservation and reuse of HILS as an important technology to combat climate change.

3. Exchanging both bottom-up and top-down practices (methodologies and tools) of participation in preservation and enhancement actions about rural landscapes.

In particular, we focus on the different types of historical irrigation systems still maintained and used in diverse landscapes around the world. We wish to explore the methodologies applied, the actors involved, and how they have integrated ancestral wisdom and technologies with the emergence of digital technologies. To properly tackle this important topic, we gathered different scholars worldwide in a multidisciplinary perspective, including landscape architecture, cultural heritage, preservation, and archaeology.

The photo essay by Yves Luginbühl draws an overview of the importance and variety of historical irrigation landscape systems, travelling through time from the Egyptian, Persian, and Roman eras, as well as across space, through several countries of the planet, from the European continent, to the Middle East, South America, and Asia. It analyses the evolution of these techniques, the factors that allow them to be maintained, to disappear, or to deteriorate. It questions the new methods and their effects on nature and ecosystems, in the context of global warming and the erosion of biodiversity.

The next two papers by Paola Branduini and Jose Maria Martin Civantos demonstrate how HILS can be useful for the present society. The first paper by Paola Branduini explores the possibility of enhancing the traditional run-off irrigation systems and winter flooding in the Italian Po plain as an opportunity to respond to the effects of climate change, such as droughts and floods. Based on the extension and recognised admiration by eighteenth and nineteenth century international scholars, the ancient water meadows technique can be considered an intangible heritage to be reinterpreted in order to respond efficiently to contemporary urban issues. Starting from an overview of the current situation and the ongoing policies of heritage protection institutions, the potential for recovery and expansion is discussed.

Similarly, Jose Maria Civantos, Sergio Martos-Rosillo, Thomas Zakaluk, Blas Ramos Rodríguez, and Antonio González Ramón explain the values of historical water management systems, the so-called acequias de careo in the Sierra Nevada, Spain. This type of irrigation system can also be considered an example of Integrated Water Management and Nature-based Solution, which has proven its efficiency and resilience since the Middle Ages. The transdisciplinary work demonstrates that acequias de careo represents sustainable and resilient solutions based on historical socio-ecological systems and local ecological knowledge and practices.

Finally, Krupa Rajangam and Kuili Suganya address the issue of contested historical landscapes and their management in India. Using the case study of the Ramanadi river basin, they argue for the recognition of historically situated sustainable practices and lived landscapes, to promote greater interest in the conservation, management, and development of landscapes, in a manner that is both environmentally and socially just.

Our hope is that this special issue may stimulate researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in finding new solutions not only for recognising the relevance of historical irrigation landscapes but also for preserving, managing, and reusing them both at a theoretical level (e.g. improving national legislation) and practical level (e.g. applying or adapting them in new case studies).

Acknowledgements

We wish to sincerely thank the editor of CMAS, Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels, for accepting and supporting our initiative. We would like to express our gratitude to the authors who enthusiastically participated in this issue, and the editorial staff of CMAS for their help.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paola Branduini

Paola Branduini is Assistant Professor of Heritage Preservation and Landscape Arhcitecture at the Politecnico di Milano. Her research focuses landscape as heritage, sustainable water management and agricultural practices in Europe, the Mediterranean and beyond.

Federico Zaina

Federico Zaina is Head of the Department of Collection and Research at the Museo Egizio of Turin. He is specialized in Near Eastern and Mediterranean archaeology, landscape archaeology and disaster risk management of cultural heritage and museum studies.