Elsevier

Applied Geography

Volume 113, December 2019, 102100
Applied Geography

Sacred natural sites in Italy have landscape characteristics complementary to protected areas: Implications for policy and planning

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2019.102100Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We tested whether sacred natural sites in Italy complement PAs at a national scale.

  • Only 18% ca. of the SNS network is included in PAs.

  • SNS are found in traditional landscapes and at low-medium elevations more than PAs.

  • SNS are important for protecting traditional landscapes and peri-urban areas.

  • New protection schemes may be appropriate for SNS with functioning governance.

Abstract

There is growing awareness that protected areas (PA) may not suffice to deliver all the targets set by international conventions and guarantee the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services in anthropogenic landscapes. However, landscapes such as sacred natural sites (SNS), which are managed with clear benefits for people and nature although not having conservation as their primary purpose, can help deliver those goals. While a number of studies have demonstrated SNS’ values for biodiversity and ecosystem services, the fundamental question of whether and how SNS may complement PA at a national scale has never been addressed. Here, we assembled a nationwide inventory of 2332 SNS in Italy and compared their spatial distribution and landscape features with those of PA. We showed that there is scarce overlap between SNS and PA and that different factors drive the density of the two networks. SNS are more frequently associated with cultural landscapes at low and medium elevations and in extensively agricultural and peri-urban settings. PA, in contrast, are mainly found in more natural environments, at higher elevations, and farther from human settlements. These results indicate that the two networks largely complement each other and have different benefits for people and biodiversity. Land planning approaches should aim to valorize this complementarity. Instead of simply including SNS into PA, SNS could obtain a legal status through other emerging policy frameworks, such as the recognition of “other effective area-based conservation measures”.

Introduction

Intensive agriculture and urban expansion are among the main drivers of habitat losses and land use changes (Emmerson et al., 2016; McDonald, Kareiva, & T.T.Forman, 2008; Plieninger et al., 2016) that can have severe impacts not only on biodiversity but also on social resilience and human wellbeing (Díaz, Fargione, Chapin, & Tilman, 2006; Jongman, 2002; Oliver et al., 2015; Rescia, Willaarts, Schmitz, & Aguilera, 2010). In the modern world, protected areas (PA), such as parks and reserves, have been the primary instrument for conserving landscapes and preventing negative land transformations (Dudley and Stolton, 2008; Joppa, Bailie, & Robinson, 2016). Although PA will continue to represent a pillar of environmental policies, questions are mounting about their capacity to realistically fulfill the targets set by international conventions (SCBD, 2010) and guarantee human and environmental wellbeing in increasingly anthropogenic landscape matrices (Trzyna, 2007).

A first limitation is that PA are more commonly established in mountainous and sparsely populated areas (Joppa & Pfaff, 2009). As such, they often fail to protect biodiversity and ecosystem functions in lowland landscapes, or bring benefits to urban or peri-urban populations. Other questions are strictly socio-economic and related to the scarce support from which PA suffer at times. Scarce support can range from direct conflict between PA and human communities to insufficient or constrained budgets, especially in times of economic austerity (Andrade & Rhodes, 2012; Bruner, Gullison, & Balmford, 2004).

Similar considerations have contributed to sparking a growing interest in landscapes that are successfully protected or sustainably managed even outside of official conservation schemes (Kothari, 2008; Naniwadekar, Mishra, Isvaran, Madhusudan, & Datta, 2015; Willis et al., 2012). These can include private estates, indigenous lands, common property areas, and sites of religious importance. These categories are not necessarily separate and can overlap. What they share is that, despite not being PA proper, they often deliver positive conservation outcomes as by-products of other primary management purposes (Dudley et al., 2018). International conservation policy is giving instances of this kind increasing recognition (Borrini-Feyerabend et al., 2013; Wild and McLeod, 2008). The expression “other effective area-based conservation measures” (OECMs) has been coined as an umbrella label and the Convention on Biological Diversity has recently recognized the legal status of OECMs (Dudley et al., 2018).

These alternative forms of land protection can offer benefits in terms of both biodiversity conservation and human wellbeing (e.g., Garnett et al., 2018). However, there are challenges in estimating those benefits and maximizing the synergy with official conservation frameworks and land planning approaches. Part of these challenges derive from incomplete knowledge of the distribution and characteristics of these areas of informal protection (Dudley et al., 2018), leading to uncertainties on their potential role in planning and conservation, and the legal status that they should be given.

This situation fully applies to Sacred Natural Sites (SNS). On the one hand, SNS have probably been better studied than most other forms of OECMs (Verschuuren, Wild, Mcneely, & Oviedo, 2010). They are often regarded as forming “shadow” conservation networks in many countries (Dudley, Higgins-Zogib, & Mansourian, 2009), and a significant body of literature documents their benefits for biodiversity and human wellbeing in both natural and urban contexts (last reviewed in Dudley et al., 2010). These findings are commonly based on field investigations of restricted regions and a limited number of sample sites. On the other hand, there are very few examples of systematic mapping and large-scale analyses that examine how the SNS network is arranged and characterized at a national scale, and draw the implications that this has on policy and planning. Similarly, there are contrasting views as to how SNS should be treated in relation to legal status and official conservation schemes. Some argue that SNS should be included in official PA networks, as they are exposed to various threats due to a lack of legal recognition (Avtzis et al., 2018). This may be especially true for the SNS of indigenous people in ancestral lands, which face severe pressures from mining and resource extraction (Verschuuren, Wild, Mcneely, & Oviedo, 2010). Others, in contrast, underline that SNS are not tantamount to PA, as their primary function is not to conserve biodiversity, and this basic difference should be considered in policy and planning (Rutte, 2011). Also, there are some indications that including SNS in PA may be detrimental, if it leads to standardized management and, consequently, loss of biological specificity (Frascaroli, Bhagwat, Guarino, Chiarucci, & Schmid, 2016).

Here, we provide one of the first quantitative assessments of whether SNS and PA networks may complement each other, as commonly assumed, using a nationwide geo-referenced database of SNS in Italy. We focus on SNS in Italy, as they constitute a rich and relatively well documented model system. Indeed earlier studies have underlined the abundance and heterogeneity of SNS in the central part of Italy (Frascaroli, 2013), their importance for both biodiversity and humans (Frascaroli, Bhagwat, & Diemer, 2014, 2016), and their role in the governance of natural resources (Frascaroli, 2018; Frascaroli & Fjeldsted, 2017). Despite the difference in study settings, these findings are quite close to those from apparently distant cultural and geographical contexts (e.g., Bhagwat & Rutte, 2006; Dudley et al., 2010; Rutte, 2011). .

In the present study, we advanced our understanding of Italian SNS and their role in conservation, by mapping SNS over the entire Country and analyzing the spatial distribution and key landscape-scale attributes of this network, as compared to the national network of PA. In particular, we tested the hypotheses that: (1) there is only limited spatial overlap between SNS and PA and they represent largely distinct networks; (2) the density of the SNS and PA networks are driven by different factors and landscape characteristics; and (3) despite their inherent differences, both SNS and PA networks may retain important values for conservation and land planning. While we focused on SNS in Italy, our approach and results can be applicable to a broader range of geographical contexts and cultural landscapes.

Section snippets

Study area

Italy is characterized by wide altitudinal and latitudinal gradients (0–4800 m ASL, and 35° N 29′ 24″ to 47° N 04′ 22″, respectively), which create a diverse range of biophysical conditions across an overall surface area of ca. 301,000 km2. The elevation profile is rugged, with a prevalence of mountainous (35.2%) and hillside (41.7%) areas (ISTAT, 2018).

Italy has a population density of ca. 201 inhabitants/km2, which is above the average of Europe and especially Southern Europe. However, the

Spatial distribution of sacred natural sites and overlap with protected areas

We identified a total of 2332 SNS unevenly distributed across Italy (Fig. 1a). Of all mapped SNS, ca. 43% are located in the northern regions of the Country, 35% in the center, and 22% in the south and islands. Although larger regions tend to host a significantly higher number of SNS (p < .001), this relationship accounts for only ca. 30% of the variability in the number of SNS per region, indicating that there are other factors driving SNS abundance. Further, SNS are clustered in some areas,

Discussion

Our results support the view that SNS and PA constitute distinct networks with regards to both spatial distribution and landscape characteristics across all of Italy. While earlier studies underlined how SNS often overlap with PA (Dudley et al., 2009; Mallarach et al., 2012), our results revealed that such overlap is limited. The simplest explanation of this scarce overlap is that, in the Italian context, SNS and PA occur in different landscapes. Overall, the distribution of PA conforms to what

Implications for policy and planning

Our results suggest that the inclusion of SNS into PA, which is sometimes advocated, may not always be the most appropriate planning approach, at least not in our study area. Plain incorporation of SNS into PA might have two main shortcomings. Firstly, in some cases it can underplay the specific characters of SNS as compared to PA, possibly leading to homogenization rather than valorization of their peculiar strengths. It is known that inclusion in PA can lead to discontinuing some of the human

Acknowledgements

This study has been funded by the project PRIN 2015P8524CBiodiversity and ecosystem services in Sacred Natural Sites (BIOESSaNS)” funded by the Ministry of Education, University and Research, Italy (MIUR).

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    These authors contributed equally to this work.

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