Publication Date:
2024-05-10
Description:
The emerging field of research concerning the geography of dissatisfaction
focuses on explaining the formation of political inclinations and behaviors
through a geographic location perspective (Iammarino et alii, 2019; Stroppe,
2023). Such dynamics are the subject of public debate, particularly with regard
to rural and disadvantaged areas that seem to fuel, more than others, attitudes
of political resentment, as in the case of abstentionism or protest voting (Rodríguez-
Pose, 2017). Central to the research on these «less fortunate» or more marginal
areas is the model that argues how citizens residing in areas relatively distant
from service-providing hubs perceive inequality in access to economic and social
resources (Petino, Scrofani, 2020). This perception contributes to the feeling of
being ignored in the broader context of global «long networks» (Dematteis, 2021),
where original local socio-cultural specificities tend to disappear, of national economic
development or on the part of political elites in general (Cramer, 2016;
Stroppe, 2023). Conversely, since every geographic system is marked by a vastness of tangible and intangible resources, normally affected by a dynamic process
of local accumulation, it has the potential to generate territorial heritage. Such
heritage, if made available to the local community and investors, could succeed
in influencing the entire set of connections, both formal and informal, that participants
have developed over time to manage it. The goal of asset creation and
management will be the compensatory measure to reduce spatial disparities and
should normally be supported by appropriate policy interventions. Activating
these dynamics represents a strategic challenge and is both complex and the subject
of European cohesion policies. While we may believe that (territorial) cohesion
policies are a well-established objective on the part of the European Union
(CEC, 2008), it is equally clear that is obviously a mistake to continue to pursue
this objective in the simple application of the same models and practices of development
for all, both for regions and for EU countries, with the risk of homologation
of intervention and its lack of effectiveness. Therefore, it is necessary that
(territorial) cohesion should be achieved by protecting and, even more, promoting
the diversity of territories in order to ensure real and lasting well-being for
local populations (Prezioso, 2020; Petino, Scrofani, 2020). See in this sense the
report by Barca (2009) entitled «An Agenda for a reformed Cohesion Policy. A
place-based approach to meeting European Union challenges and expectations»
to observe how development models that incentivize processes of valorization
of territorialized resources according to place-based or place evidence-based
approaches, can be considered paradigmatic in the approach to «places» to their
understanding and to the possible implementation of cohesion policies aimed
at local specificities and for this reason, at least on paper, more effective. It is in
this scenario that our observation finds its ease, in a phase that moreover sees
the issue of energy transition becoming a central element of European policy, to
facilitate which transition support tools, such as energy communities, have been
introduced for local communities. The area of observation is the Belìce Valley in
Sicily, which will be discussed in the second section. In particular, our focus is on
that part that was affected by the 1968 earthquake, already the subject of reconstruction
intervention in the past decades and more recently of the community
policy that, in the 2014-2020 seven-year period, allowed for the establishment of
a new governance entity called the Local Action Group (LAG) Valle del Belìce.
New opportunities could arise from the constituting energy communities and
from the hypothesis of a candidature as a project area in the National Strategy
for Inner Areas, which we will discuss in more detail in the third paragraph. The
aim of this work is to reconstruct the territorial mosaic in order to identify some
characteristics and possible development trajectories by offering an interpretation,
a guiding thread and a possible way out of typical dynamics of stagnation
that have been keeping an area of great interest on the margins for just over fifty
years (Messina, 2019; Mattia et alii, 2021).
Description:
Published
Description:
129-152
Description:
OS: Terza missione
Description:
N/A or not JCR
Repository Name:
Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
Type:
article
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