Removing cultural barriers to climate change adaptation in Tuscany

Abstract

The paper investigates the role that cultural and affective factors exert, in Tuscany and more generally in Italy, in hindering policies of mitigation and adaptation to climate change. The underlying thesis is that the importance and ‘weight’ that the established historical landscape exerts in this geographical context makes it difficult for local society to accept the transformations necessary to adapt the landscape to the new climate. After reviewing available data on climate transformations in Italy and Tuscany in recent decades and taking stock of the status of mitigation and adaptation planning, some projects for the construction of renewable energy production facilities are analyzed. In order to highlight the cultural roots of inertia to adaptation policies, the debate that has developed in the media over these projects and the legal and bureaucratic oppositions to them are analyzed. The discussion of cases is made using the concept of sostalgia developed by Glen Albrecth and relating the idea of landscape that implicitly emerges from the debate with the static and musealized conception of the same that has been established in Italy through the protection laws enacted since the 1930s. The concluding section of the paper discusses the policy implications of the present work.