Community resilience, land degradation and endogenous lock-in effects: evidence from the Alento region, Campania, Italy

Abstract

This study analyses social, economic and political “lock-ins” for understanding community resilience and land degradation. The study focuses on lock-ins from within communities, using four case study communities in Italy affected by land degradation. The analysis highlights the complex interrelationships between various lock-ins, and suggests that the communities are on declining resilience pathways that may lead to increasing difficulties in addressing land degradation issues in future.

Keywords:

• community resilience
• lock-ins
• land degradation
• Italy

Acknowledgements

The authors thank all the respondents and interviewees in the study communities. They also wish to acknowledge very useful and constructive comments by the reviewers of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Although definitions of “community” vary considerably (Wilson 2012a), in our study communities were villages with a clearly defined community boundary (administrative), clearly attributable land ownership patterns (i.e. most farmers belonging to one specific community) and with evident cultural attachment of residents to “their” specific community.

2. Individual quotes are anonymised and respondents are labelled according to which communities they come from (Stella Cilento [SC], San Mauro Cilento [SM], Velina [V] and Petrosa [P]).

3. In San Mauro Cilento this can be traced back through official documents to AD1092 when Italo-Greek monks began cultivating the steep slopes in the area.

Additional information

Funding

This study was financed by the European Union project “Land and Ecosystem Degradation and Desertification: Assessing the Fit of Responses – LEDDRA” [FP7-ENV-2009-1 Collaborative Project, No. 243857; 2010-2014].