I hesitated to write this article, but, as I live between illusion and hope, here is another article about the Northeast of Algarve, this time about the Landscape Transformation Program (PTP), approved by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers (RCM ) No. 49/2020 published in the DR No. 121/2020 of June 24th.
No on January 5, 2017, I wrote in the Sul Informação an article about the northeast of the Algarve IS in the day March 7, 2019 I published another article about the Alcoutim competence center, concerning abandonment and desertification.
I'm going to repeat a part of these writings because, unfortunately, in this case of the Northeastern Algarve, the inertia of history is, indeed, tragically distressing.
In fact, in the last quarter of a century we have applied all kinds of policy measures in the territory of the North-East Algarve: integrated rural development programs (PIDR), rural centers, the national program to combat desertification, the agro-environmental and agroforestry measures of the 1992 CAP reform, the Leader rural development programme, the rural development programs of the various Community support frameworks (CSF), the regional operational programs of the NUTS II region.
In all cases, the Northeast of Algarve resisted, as if to say that its problem has become a chronic disease, to which all experts in the political engineering of the territory must submit.
Quoting one of the articles from that time, “twenty years have passed since the income compensation granted under the 2080 community regulation, I ask, do we today have an agroforestry economy worthy of the name? Do we have today a multifunctionality and pluriactivity worthy of the name? Do we break the vicious circle of desertification and depopulation? Did we at least “touristify” the remote interior and the Lower Guadiana? In the area of cross-border cooperation, have we made progress worthy of the name? Do we already have the navigability of the Guadiana assured to Alcoutim? Unfortunately, we only made a mitigation policy and we cannot say that we have reversed the long trend in the northeast of the Algarve”.
And I immediately added: “Over the next twenty years, agro-environmental and agroforestry measures in the northeastern Algarve continue to make sense, mostly due to climate change, but they need to be reframed in another development model for the northeastern Algarve, a model covering the entire Lower Guadiana and recovering agroforestry multifunctionality through a new generation of environmental or ecosystem payments. Without this association between multifunctionality and payment for services, the northeastern Algarve will be unavoidable. The Northeast of Algarve needs, however, some ambassadors to be able to rewrite its future: two or three historical and cultural icons, two or three high quality nature trails, two or three high quality branded products, two or three good practices of circular economy, two or three floristic or faunal endemisms for observation, two or three events of great prestige, two or three permanent residences of an artistic and/or scientific nature. And, fundamentally, an actor-network that is always present and that makes the reticulation of the whole”.
The Landscape Transformation Program (PTP)
It is in this context and in this already long sequence that the Landscape Transformation Program appears. I want to believe that it is worth explaining the essentials of the program, as its literature is, apparently, very inclusive.
The Resolution of the Council of Ministers (RCM) No. 49/2020 of 24 June created the Landscape Transformation Program (PTP). Due to its importance for the development of inland territories, I bring to the readers' knowledge some passages from this Resolution.
“Forest areas, wooded areas, bushes and pastures, which occupy almost 70% of the land area of mainland Portugal, constitute a vital element of the rural landscape and support and connectivity of ecosystems, as well as an economic, environmental and social anchor of the territories and of their collective memory. They play a key role in carbon sequestration, essential for Portugal to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050 and also play an important role in regulating the different natural cycles, having a structuring function for the conservation of nature and biodiversity”.
"Nevertheless, in a significant part of these forest spaces, the physical characteristics, such as the relief or poor soils, the accentuated depopulation and aging of the population, and the consequent abandonment of the agro-forestry-pastoral model, together with an extreme fragmentation of properties, determine a framework marked by extensive monoculture forest areas, most of them unmanaged, which, in the presence of adverse weather conditions, reach extreme fire hazard levels, jeopardizing people, animals and property, including natural and cultural heritage”.
"For these contexts, it is necessary to develop structured and environmentally and financially sustainable responses in order to increase their socio-ecological resilience and contribute to their integrated development, from the reorganization of the landscape, combined with an agricultural, agroforestry and forest mosaic -pastoral, capable of providing various environmental services and sustaining the economic activities associated with them, significantly reducing the severity of the burned area.
For this purpose, it is essential to motivate owners, preferably constituted in clusters, to invest and manage their rustic properties, including in the post-fire context, in order to break the divestment cycle and promote active management, planning and revitalization of minifundio forest areas”.
"Based on these assumptions, the Government defined concrete measures to intervene in rural areas, promoting the diversification of the landscape, reducing the fuel load, increasing the managed forest area and the conversion and densification of the existing area to species more adapted to the territory , including agricultural, in view of its resilience to risks, namely fires, and the enhancement of the landscape in a multidimensional perspective and promoting carbon sequestration”.
It is precisely the achievement of scale – minimal landscape units – one of the critical success factors of management and planning actions in the context of these territories, given their extremely fragmented ownership structure. This land ownership structure profile, associated with the disincentives that the high fire risk and low profitability represent, not only keep owners away from investing in their properties, but are also a blocking factor to the development of collective solutions, as they are dependent on the joint and concerted action of countless owners”.
The guiding principles of the Landscape Transformation Program
In view of these constraints, it is important to design, for vulnerable territories, incentives adjusted to the specific characteristics and constraints, which provide sufficiently flexible, attractive and mobilizing, but also binding instruments that encourage local entities to move towards collective projects, accompanied by the respective adhesion of the forest owners.
The RCM establishes as guiding principles of the PTP:
a) The support and remuneration of the transformation of the landscape in the long term, through a participatory process of a local base that reinforces the territorial culture and the capacity of the actors in the territory;
b) The adoption of public policies of an environmental nature that align the interests of society and future generations with those of land owners and managers, in order to promote greater inter-territorial and inter-generational justice;
c) The application of sustainable management to rural property as a pillar of territorial planning, making it viable in smallholding territories through its productive valorization and the recognition and compensation of positive externalities;
d) The defense of the public interest in assuming the management of unmanaged rustic properties without a known owner, namely with regard to the execution of actions to defend the forest against fire and prevent biotic (pests and diseases) and abiotic risks;
e) Close monitoring of projects and good monitoring and evaluation of results according to established goals and objectives, based on indicators of economic efficiency and effectiveness and territorial sustainability;
f) The definition of expedited and flexible intervention models, particularly in the post-fire period, in order to trigger, immediately and in loco, the actions necessary for emergency stabilization.
PTP's programmatic intervention measures
The Landscape Transformation Program provides for the following programmatic intervention measures:
a) Landscape Reorganization and Management Programs (PRGP), aimed at promoting landscape design as a reference for a new economy in rural territories;
b) Integrated Landscape Management Areas, which define a grouped management model, operationalized through Integrated Landscape Management Operations (OIGP), aimed at specific micro-territorial contexts;
c) «Condomínio de Aldeia», an Integrated Support Program for Villages located in forest territories, with the objective of ensuring the management of fuels around population agglomerates in areas with high forest density and a high number and dispersion of small rural agglomerates;
d) Program “Emparcelar para Ordenar”, with a view to promoting the increase in the physical dimension of rural properties in the context of smallholdings and, thus, increasing economic, social and environmental viability and sustainability.
Final Notes
At that time I wrote: “Regulation 2080 substantially reduced the multiple use of the forest, started a forest monoculture of pine, implemented the so-called protection forest with a very high density per hectare. This forestry monoculture, by breaking the delicate balance that came from behind, may have resolved income compensation for some time, but it blocked other possible solutions within the reach of agroforestry that would have, perhaps, spared the pluriactivity and multifunctionality of the northeastern Algarve”.
However, Eng. Victor Louro, in the book “A Floresta em Portugal” (2016) by Editorial Gradiva (p.234) wrote:
– The arboreal cover protects the soil through a living blanket, that is, from bushes that are born and grow in a relatively open forest, not very dense,
– The installation of the forest can be achieved with low soil mobilization,
– A correct installation and management allows for an adequate control of surface water runoff, once again saving the soil,
– The techniques for extracting woody material and cork must take into account the need not to compact the soil, using adequate equipment so as not to open up tracks that may be just as many banks of water runoff.
– The so-called clearing of the bushes done anyway and taking everything in front of you is a blunder for not feeding, precisely, the dead blanket.
In other words, with a more polycultural forestry, it would have been possible to preserve and improve the multifunctionality of the agroforestry economy in the Northeast, which also includes, for example, greater balance through the recolonization of the holm oak and the installation of biodiverse pasture for small ruminants. However, the decapitalization of families, the accelerated aging and the degradation of the symbolic capital of this sub-region did not allow this to happen.
Here I leave a suggestion. Within the framework of the PTP, the creation of integrated landscape management areas (AIGP) is foreseen with the aim of promoting the management of agroforestry areas in areas of minifundia and high risk of fire.
The recommended model is oriented towards concrete local communities, as its constitution depends on the mobilization of producers and owners, so the involvement of local interlocutors, such as municipalities, in these depopulated and aging rural contexts, is an indispensable factor to create credibility and convince owners to adhere to collective management models.
The model foresees, in addition to the Management Entities of Forest Intervention Zones (ZIF), the Forest Management Units (UGF) as a new form of organization of producers and owners for the aggregate management of forest and agricultural areas, particularly smallholdings.
The AIGP model also foresees the availability of financial instruments that guarantee predictable and stable returns in the medium term. This support includes, in the short term, financing for the constitution and functioning of entities responsible for the administration and management of the AIGP, through the signing of program contracts.
As an innovative element to encourage local entities and landowners to move forward with the constitution of the AIGP, the introduction of the Multi-Fund modality stands out, which combines, for the same area covered by support, the financing instruments of the European Rural Development Fund and the Fund Environmental, providing support not only for investment, but also for maintenance and management in the medium term, as well as the remuneration of ecosystem services, which will take the form of a base remuneration depending on the area managed while the present support framework remains in force, allowing stable and predictable remuneration conditions in the medium term.
Between illusion and hope, I believe that the AIGP fit well within the framework of policy measures promised by the European bazooka, with expression in the recovery program and in the future partnership agreement, as well as in the Algarve's regional operational programme.
It is a program for a decade, however, if we do not have a mission structure or an actor-network for the Northeastern Algarve and the Lower Guadiana, we will not be successful, as without permanence there will be no competence.
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