The resilience of the carob tree in Sicily, the rediscovery of ancient varieties of drought-resistant vegetables, and the restoration of dry-stone walls are virtuous measures that belong to the history of our rural landscapes and that today, in the face of the challenges posed by climate change, can represent the future.

Our Earth. Our Future is the slogan for this year’s World Environment Day: an opportunity to bring environmental issues back to the centre of public debate and for people to raise awareness and become active agents of change towards more sustainable patterns of living. Celebrated each year on 5 June to commemorate the first United Nations Conference on the Environment held in Stockholm in 1972, it is also an opportunity to reflect on human rights and responsibilities in relation to the Planet we inhabit.

The Land and the Earth

This year’s World Environment Day wanted to bring attention back to the earth, not only the one we inhabit, with a capital E, but also the one that is under our feet every day, which allows us to live, with its ability to sustain crops, filter water and be one of our major climate regulators. Land that becomes territory, environment and landscape depending on the gaze with which we observe it and that, in all its meanings, is being profoundly transformed by man and the drastic effects of climate change. The erosion of soils due to violent rains, their loss of fertility due to desertification, the alteration of the water cycle, and the increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather phenomena are just some of the consequences we are already experiencing first-hand.

World Environment Day therefore wants to bring the earth – an earth that is now more vulnerable, that needs to be respected and cared for – back to the centre, to push public debate and governors to think about and implement solutions for land restoration, combating desertification and drought resilience. 

Within this framework, FAI wants to recall precisely those virtuous measures in harmony with nature that man has traditionally put into practice to cope with the ‘hostile’ conditions dictated by the climate: those solutions and measures that FAI itself reproposes within its properties. 

The carob tree in the Giardino della Kolymbethra 

At the Giardino della Kolymbethra in the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, for example, traditional Sicilian plants are being revived, first and foremost the carob tree, to extend the shaded areas and ‘defend’ against rising temperatures and sunlight. Called the shade tree, the carob tree is an evergreen species typical of the maquis vegetation of the Mediterranean area, able to adapt in arid places and resist drought. An integral part of the Sicilian agrarian landscape, its cultivation has very ancient origins and is based on the use of the pods both for human consumption and as food for animals, but its function extends from the material to the immaterial, from the economic to the environmental and cultural, because under its thick foliage men and animals have always found shelter and refreshment from the sun that incessantly kisses the lands of Trinacria.

Ancient Seeds at the Orto sul Colle dell’Infinito

At the Orto sul Colle dell’Infinito in Recanati (MC), on the other hand, care for the land is down to the last detail: only natural products are used in the small, organically cultivated plot, the soil is enriched with organic humus-based fertilisers and the vegetable results are recycled; there are different varieties of flowers to encourage pollinators and intercropping is practised among the horticultural species. This is a vegetable garden that wants to keep the agronomic tradition alive, reconciling attention to the well-being of the soil and biodiversity with the cultural heritage of the land. In fact, most of the vegetable crops come from ancient seeds, linked to tradition and peasant memory. Prominent among these is the Varro tomato obtained by Agronomist Nazareno Strampelli in the early decades of the 20th century by crossing a prized drought-resistant English variety – Sutton’s Best of All – with Italian varieties resistant to downy mildew, thus bringing about a genetic improvement in terms of resistance and adaptability to the environment and now also to climate change. The seeds of this variety, thought to be lost, were found in 2015 by researchers from the Department of Agricultural Sciences at the Università Politecnica delle Marche in the Germplasm Bank of the Vavilov Institute (VIR) in St Petersburg and were subsequently donated to FAI.

Dry-stone walls in FAI properties

And it doesn’t end there: important ecological and landscape functions of defence and restoration of the territory are performed by the dry-stone walls. Recovered and restored in many FAI properties – from Podere Case Lovara in the Cinque Terre park, to Castel Grumello in Valtellina, to Borgo di San Fruttuoso in the Gulf of Camogli and Baia di Ieranto – these structures built since ancient times can help us in the challenge of increasing the resilience of the territory to climate change. Their presence not only helps curb the violence of water and combat soil erosion, but also plays an important role in combating desertification. Cultures that have had to adapt to the scarcity of water resources have in fact used dry-stone constructions as moisture ‘collectors’, as catchment surfaces for the water present in the atmosphere and in the interstices of the soil.