Thesis title: Environment and sustainable agriculture in the Italian Regions
Environment and sustainable agriculture in the Italian Regions
Abstract of the PhD Thesis
Alda Miftari, PhD Candidate
The final paper presented for the PhD thesis analyses and brings back to unitarity, as far as possible, some of the research activities carried out by me during these three years, whose common thread is the environmental impact of human activities and the promotion of sustainable development in agriculture.
The research analyses and investigates the connections between factors considered as influent for the development of sustainable agriculture and sustainable economic development, by making leverage at the agriculture sector, and the preservation of the environment.
Decision making processes focused on the allocation, accessibility and exploitation of primary resources, combined in an economic model of inter-dependence and interaction, in a win- win strategy between actors of the agriculture sector, have been investigated by making use of both primary and secondary data.
This has been developed by using both deductive and inductive approach, respectively in the investigation of the legal framework that governs the EU policy and development strategies, impact they have in member countries and their sectorial structure, as well as in how the specific characteristic of the environment, sector structure and actors operating in member countries and their regions influence and must be taken in account when shaping the EU policy on strategies and their budgeting for a sustainable agriculture.
Development paradigms have been investigated, considering as independent variables different behavioural and attitudinal choices of farmers and policymakers in resources and budgets allocation, embodied in economic models, to investigate the effects they might have in sustainable agriculture and sustainable development. This by developing a descriptive research and a causal comparative approach.
The trade - offs between short run and long run prospective of investments in agriculture, human resources development in the sector and environment have been considering by developing a quantitative approach on this purpose.
My line of research has been marked, from the point of view of economic and environment policy, on the historical analysis of the development of the agricultural sector from the beginning of Common Agriculture Policies (CAP) to the present day and the changes that have occurred in contemporary socio-economic context and national territory, making particular reference to issues related to farmers involvement and environmental impact.
Relevant impact has the environmental sociology with the interaction between the society and the nature considering the stakeholders as the most important actor on their natural environment with the inclusion of physical context related to social factors. From the sociological point of view the stakeholders with their direct activities on the natural resources and their intervention on policies and governance has impose important reflections and agreements.
Part of my research has been, in fact, focused on the analysis of the level of education between stakeholders, population of organic farming in Italian regions, social farming with regard to the agri-food sector and the management of water for irrigation.
Emphasis is placed both on the policies implemented at EU level with focus on Water Framework Directive (WFD) and national level on the change of consumption, in particular with regard to the purchase of organic products.
In fact, the need to change the production paradigm by promoting sustainability is also seen from the point of view of climate change mitigation and its socio-economic impacts, particularly from the point of view of environmental disasters.
This point is also analyzed in terms of EU Member States and Italian level, with reference to the possible changes and global adoptions for more sustainable agriculture.
It is therefore possible to hypothesize a dynamic-functional model of the prospects for improving global sustainability, in the sense that the endogenous factors that cannot be changed in the short term, i.e. the farms structure and the productive system, and the exogenous factors, i.e. the characteristics of the physical and socio-economic environment in which the farms are inserted, in relation to the current situation, into opportunities for improvement for farms that are in a position to increase their size, defined as -developing, and into threats for those that, conversely, show signs of a possible exit from the sector, called -declining.
The analysis carried out, therefore, indicates the possibility, above all for policy makers, to be able to act on the factors that have proved to be statistically significant, in order to outline
a framework of improvement of the overall sustainability of agriculture in Italian regions, allowing the movement of farms from the condition of - balance to that of - development, which may eventually extend to those that are in the condition of - decline.
Finally, the analysis model can be defined as static, in that a change in the current situation is not considered likely, given the absence of incentives from within the farms and their inability to seize the opportunities presented by the external environment.