Owners of a Common Heritage. Commons, Environment and Rights in European Mountains (18th - 20th century)

Project Information

OCHER

Grant agreement ID: 101033368

DOI

10.3030/101033368

Project closed

EC signature date 22 March 2021

Start date 1 June 2021

End date 31 May 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 162 040,32

EU contribution

€ 162 040,32

Coordinated by

UNIVERZA NA PRIMORSKEM UNIVERSITA DEL LITORALE
Slovenia

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - OCHER (Owners of a Common Heritage. Commons, Environment and Rights in European Mountains (18th - 20th century))

Reporting period: 2021-06-01 to 2023-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Hosted at The University of Primorska, Slovenia, the OCHER project investigated, with a multidisciplinary approach, the relation between specific historical forms of lands and resources collective management and the current environmental and landscape value of those areas, inquiring the issue of accessibility rights to natural resources.
The research addressed different kinds of “institutions for collective action”, at different scales and with a very extended time frame. In rural areas, where conservation and sustainable use of the environment were largely centred on “people working with nature”, the minimal structures of organisation historically were mainly households. In contemporary times, these ancient household management networks were replaced by more formalised structures or institutions (consortia, family groups, agrarian communities).
A combined historical, anthropological and juridical approach was thus needed for a better understanding of the long-term effects of resource use in the environment, for a deeper reflection on the specificity of (collective) subjects and on the mechanisms of (collective) legal actions and institutions, analysed in particular in the light of important political and institutional changes (the end of socialist regimes, for example).

The research had three main objectives (corresponding to three different Work packages):

O1. The core objective was to work on case studies, mainly selected following the Habitat Directive (Council Directive 92/43/EEC), from the Site of Community Importance list located in Slovenia and Italy (Karst and Dinaric Alps), comparing them with other European and Eastern European cases. Through a deep historical and ethnological analysis, the goal was to offer a non-linear reconstruction, at a local scale, of common lands management, where bargaining and negotiation performed a fundamental role to guarantee dynamic sustainability between social competition and an equal and durable access to resources.
O2. The second objective addressed the theoretical aspects of the juridical and anthropological relation man/nature, with strict references to different European legal systems and codifications. Many scholars are working on ownerships issues related to environmental problems, trying to define the theoretical framework of a juridical re-interpretation of the concept of property: It is possible, nowadays, to imagine different forms of sovereignty on natural resources? Does the notion of property interpreted as faculty to dwell a place have a better ecological impact? Does a vision of ownership centred on uses and practises respond to our environmental problems?
O3. The third objective was applicative and had the aim to work on concrete projects in the field of natural and cultural heritage. The challenge was to use the historical and ethnographic research to analyse jurisdictional and social dynamics in rural local communities, and to bridge the worlds of research and public administration, policy makers, local associations and managers of local spaces, addressing at the same time the current European policies on the topic. Thanks to the research carried out, it was possible to elaborate other proposals, such as the GMAJNA project, part of a larger INTERREG Italy-Slovenia project, still in the evaluation phase, in which concrete proposals for local development (environmental management, sustainable tourism, valorisation of the cultural heritage) were made.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Methods: The project, being interdisciplinary in its premises, made use of historical and anthropological research tools: archival research, study of secondary literature, fieldwork, interviews, participation in the activities of current agrarian communities, interaction with other realities in the area (e.g. Natural parks such as the Škocjan Caves one).

Results: The different international case studies selected pointed out unforeseen juridical subjects of collective actions. Comparing, also from a diachronic perspective, different case studies, “weak” or “dynamic” collective institutions with particular social actors (as family groups and kinships, 19th century forestry consortia, post-socialist agrarian communities), in politically highly conflicted areas, across disputed borders and with uneven administrative strategies affecting contiguous territories, offered a wider and deeper interpretation, and the nature of the sources addressed helped to better understand the actual issues of common resources management, always in a comparative perspective.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project was successful, even beyond expectations, thanks to the synergy with the supervisor and the intense and fruitful multidisciplinary work. With respect to the state of the art (in this case the now endless literature on the commons, from a wide variety of disciplines), the OCHER project added a level of in-depth research in local realities, in which historical research was intertwined with ethnographic interviews, underlining the now unavoidable link between environmental issues and social forms of natural resource management. The results of the project suggest, also at the level of local policies, a necessary assumption of social responsibility with regard to environmental issues, with the awareness that “we have available in the depository of the human experience a large array of institutional settings that can be used to test an alternative vision using metrics other than that of short-term profitability and efficient extraction such as: sustainability, capacity to regenerate resources, and ecological integrity”. On the many occasions when it was possible to meet with local communities and stakeholders (e.g. during the Researchers' Night, interviews and assembly or convivial moments with agrarian communities), the topic aroused great interest and the debate even stimulated other communities to start new reflections on the possibility of reconstituting their agrarian communities too, thus leading to concrete results with important social implications.

cartography work

fieldwork

the agrarian community path