La frizione tra tutela del mondo pastorale e conservazione della natura. Un problema aperto

The paper aims at discussing the fundamental characteristics of extensive pastoralism, its value as a biocultural heritage safeguarding and valorising knowledge, practices, landscapes and territories. After a critical analysis of the principal aspects and environmental, social and cultural impacts of husbandry, the paper starts approaching crucial questions such as the relationship between the planes and the mountains, the human-animal coexistence, pastoralism as an eco-systemic service, its environmental, economic and social sustainability, its capacity to conserving the past and to elaborate perspectives for the future. Case-studies and the ethnographic context are European, with particular reference to the extensive Italian pastoralism, above all the Southern-Central regions of the Apennines’ backbone. Methodology of research was essentially qualitative, based on in-depth interviews, focus groups, participatory inventories of the common cultural heritage, restitutive accounts to the communities involved. The value of the collected data and of the witnesses, shared with communities and local actors is today an intangible cultural heritage embedded in the territories. This heritage has been acknowledged first of all with the nomination to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List and more recently with the process of acknowledgement in the Register of the Global Agrarian Landscapes FAO-GIAHS. How this intangible heritage framework is impacting on the practices and the everyday life of the local actors? How Will be safeguarded and valorised extensive and traditional pastoralism in the future? Who’s taking decisions about the knowledge-practice system shared by the local communities? Who’s managing and controlling the processes and the official narrative about such a practice?