Mediterranean environments, rural development, and local communities: toward a zero-net degradation perspective?

The long-term evolution of anthropogenic landscapes has represented over the centuries a process of adaptation of rural communities to the natural constraints that have always conditioned production processes and their development in the Mediterranean basin. Farmers tried to free themselves from these bonds with a series of agricultural works and practices, more or less traditional and linked with on-site environmental characteristics. Land reclamation, and intense work of terracing, retaining walls, and drainage channels are examples of such planning activities. Assuming the permanence of farmers in suboptimal districts, such as mountainous areas, this chapter focuses on the intrinsic relationship between landscape and agriculture and the latent impact on soil degradation, both on-site and off-site, with a specific discussion on the Northern Mediterranean case.