Facing Climate Vulnerability in Mountain Areas: The Role of Rural Actors’ Agency and Situated Knowledge Production

Ivano Scotti, Corrado Ievoli (), Letizia Bindi, Sara Bispini and Angelo Belliggiano
Additional contact information
Ivano Scotti: Department of Social Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, 80138 Naples, Italy
Corrado Ievoli: Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Food Sciences, University of Molise, 86100 Campobasso, Italy
Letizia Bindi: Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education, and BIOCULT Centre of Research, University of Molise, 86100 Campobasso, Italy
Sara Bispini: Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Food Sciences, University of Molise, 86100 Campobasso, Italy
Angelo Belliggiano: Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Food Sciences, University of Molise, 86100 Campobasso, Italy

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 22, 1-19

Abstract: Climate change is challenging in mountain areas, and initiatives to define resilience programs appear essential to face global warming impacts. Despite the participatory strategy being primarily considered the best solution to involve local actors in adopting resilience actions, the literature stresses how mountain dwellers, like farmers, are often considered passive subjects, and their ability to understand climate change and the actions to adopt is inadequate. Based on this consideration, we aim to highlight the relevance of the mountain actors’ agency, their “lay” situated knowledge, and the epistemology for co-defining resilience actions. Adopting a “weak version” of the Actor-Network Theory as the research posture, we argue that farmers’ perceptions of climate vulnerability is based on their experience of it, and their resilience actions or suggestions are coherent with their endowment resources (financial and knowledge) and their position in the economic system. In this sense, local actors’ initiatives to face climate change can be limited by their specific position in the socioeconomic contest-related value chain and their specific relationship with local natural settings. A participative strategy to co-define resilience actions can help identify more effective initiatives according to the context between actors. Moreover, it can contribute to the knowledge exchange among “lay” local actors, experts, and policymakers, benefiting everyone; farmers could identify suitable solutions to face climate vulnerability, experts could increase their knowledge of local contexts, and policymakers could define adequate policies. Focusing on a specific area in “Alto Molise” (Italy), we present research results to contribute to the debate on climate resilience in mountain areas, stressing the significance of the local actors’ agency, the presence of the different epistemologies put in play (lay and expert ones), the co-production of knowledge, and the need to actively involve local actors in designing practices and policies to face climate change.

Keywords: agency; climate change perception; farmers; food value chain; rural economies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/22/15877/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/22/15877/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:22:p:15877-:d:1278843

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().