Mediterranean pastorality: Sustainable know-how in search of development

Abstract

While the new societal expectations, focused on sustainable development, endow Mediterranean pastoral systems with tangible advantages (environmentally-friendly breeding, quality products, keeper of traditions), they seem mired in a strange paradox where the robustness forged over thousands of years as being the only way of maintaining them in a extensive environment, actually makes them highly vulnerable to the technological innovations and developments of the current socio-economic environment. More importantly, as the only ones to possess original assets (local breeds, know-how etc.) and able to differentiate them and add value to them in the current context of globalization, these systems probably make the least effort to preserve such resources and such a heritage. Referring to a number of examples of recent innovations and based on the paradigm of complexity and systemic analysis, the author reflects on some of the reasons for this paradox. In his analysis he suggests combining the field of technical innovation with cognitive, organizational and cultural aspects to form 'an anthropological whole' which is necessary to maintain a balance between the system and its environment and, by the same token, to explain the conditions for ownership and for learning innovation.