The main goal of this project is to halt the loss of cultural practices that benefit biodiversity in cultural landscapes.

Background

As commonly known, biodiversity improves the functions of ecosystems and prevents their collapse when environmental changes happen, providing to the systems higher resilience and adaptation to variations. Many human practices have had a positive contribution to the conservation of natural resources and biodiversity, constituting a main provision factor to the ecological and functional integrity of the Mediterranean cultural landscapes. Nowadays, human intervention still contributes to conservation of natural resources, and determines among some natural factors (for instance, soil or climate), biodiversity levels in many cultural landscapes.

Across the Mediterranean countries, we are observing how agricultural landscapes are evolving in a polarizing trend towards abandonment or intensification. This actual conversion of agricultural systems is provoking the loss of the associated biodiversity, as numerous wild species depend on agrosilvopastoral practices in different and often complex and multidirectional ways. This is reducing their resilience and adaptation to variations, causing instability, and increasing the risk of collapse of the entire system.

Fortunately, some agricultural, pastoral and silvicultural practices maintain elements of wild diversity across the Mediterranean basin benefiting the equilibrium of the system. Those types of agriculture are being lost due to the economic difficultness of maintaining them, as most relate to lower productivity and profitability. This is partly due to lack of recognition and measurement of the ecosystems services that those cultural practices provide. To stop the loss of these valuable systems, it is decisive to enhance the link between biodiversity and agricultural practices that maintain it, promoting more action towards the support and the upholding of this type of farming.

For this reason since 2017, several conservation organizations in the Mediterranean basin are working together for the preservation of cultural landscapes.

Main objective

The long-term vision is that the value of beneficial practices is widely acknowledged and these practices used broadly, contributing in maintaining large areas of diverse Mediterranean landscapes.