Mind the gap: Restoring habitats to leave no one and no place behind.

Awakening the Potential of the (Still Forgotten) Mountain “Lands of the Mediterranean Diet” Through Conscious and Sustainable Tourism

Looking at our planet from an external perspective, we can clearly see that everything on Earth is a constant and continuous interconnection of habitats.

Habitats — those places that allow certain species to live, develop, and reproduce — are therefore places of life, richness, and diversity par excellence. From plants to animals, terrestrial to marine ecosystems, underground biodiversity to human settlements, it is impossible to consider habitats without the networks of relationships, interconnections, and exchanges resulting from them.

It is no coincidence that the very etymology of the word goes back to a Latin word — habitus, habito, habitare which naturally remind us the word inhabitant. Living in a certain place (a habitat, indeed) involves habits, that are the result of interactions with the surrounding landscape, it’s individuals, it’s communities, it’s rituals. This triggers a close link between places, humans, nature, biodiversity, and habits, the intersection of which gives rise to identity itself.

This week we celebrated World Habitat Day, the international occasion to reflect on the state of our habitats and to act to close the current gaps affecting the globe. Data on the current depletion of natural habitats are evident at different layers: deforestation and advancing desertification, ocean acidification, progressive urbanization of wild areas, and biodiversity loss are all critical aspects accelerating the pace toward Earth Overshoot Day. These are challenges that compromise the creation of safer cities and hinder essential human rights, such as the right to have access to adequate shelter, sufficient food, clean water, and local services.

The focus of this year is “Mind the Gap. Leave No One and No Place Behind” to look at the problem of growing inequality and challenges in cities and human settlements.

“(To leave no one behind) means making cities work for women and children and closing existing gaps: between the haves and the have-nots; within and between urban and rural areas; and within and between developed and developing regions.

Inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable cities and human settlements are crucial –

and local action is key.” stressed António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations.

From these words and the real need to redesign habitats systemically (considering the relationships and interconnections typical of territories, nature, and communities), I would like to share this week the ambition to extend the vision of Pollica 2050 to the entire Cilento mountain area.

Integral ecological regeneration cannot be achieved only by protecting and enhancing isolated habitats and villages (such as Pollica), but also require an ecosystemic approach able to increase survival, resilience, persistence, and the diversity of the whole Mediterranean habitat, including the plurality of mountainous lands. This requires a cooperative effort and needs to be intentionally designed.

The challenge: elevating tourism as the tool to redesign resilience in the Mediterranean mountain habitat

The lands of the Mediterranean Diet include the ‘Alento-Monte della Stella’ Mountain Community, consisting of 11 municipalities, and the Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni National Park, consisting of 8 mountain communities and 80 municipalities.

We are talking about a mountainous territory characterized by beautiful landscapes and unspoiled nature, with historical, architectural, and archaeological heritage, regenerative agriculture, and typical local agricultural, food, wine, and craft products. All thanks to an ethno-anthropological and cultural heritage dating back thousands of years. All this tangible and intangible patrimony is clearly part of the recognized quality of life whose emblem is the Mediterranean Diet.

Yet these are often forgotten places, marked by advancing depopulation, land abandonment, infrastructural isolation, and social desertification. These aspects are also evident from a tourist point of view. Unlike the coastal Mediterranean municipalities that can benefit from sea-related tourism, the ‘mountain’ destination has not yet established itself.

Our challenge starts from here: that of intentionally redesigning resilience in the Mediterranean mountain habitat by reawakening the potential of slow and regenerative tourism, the kind of tourism that is linked to the principles of the Mediterranean Diet and approaches the entire territory with care and respect.

Through responsible forms of tourism, it is in fact possible to reorganize and revalorize the Mediterranean mountain habitat as a whole. This includes the naturalistic, landscape, archaeological, historical-cultural, architectural and ethno-anthropological heritage because only when it is known, can it be truly understood in its value and therefore preserved. This also includes the social fabric, because increasing tourist attractiveness can reverberate in better services for both tourists and the local community, representing a powerful tool against mountain abandonment and infrastructural isolation.

Given its potential to embrace simultaneously a political, environmental, social, human, cultural, and economic regeneration, responsible tourism in the lands of the Mediterranean Diet can rehabilitate the networks between the mountain habitats and include the tourist as an integral part of this ecosystem.

1.Tourism as a tool to strengthen the mountain habitat network

Among the greatest issues affecting the Mediterranean mountain heritage, is a high degree of disconnection. There have been initiatives launched by specific local authorities in the Mediterranean habitats to relaunch their areas, but there is no coordination to maximize the effects of the actions undertaken. What is needed is to make a precise analysis of the available resources and to approach the immense existing heritage systemically.

Tourism can become the tool to strengthen mountain networking, forcing single habitats to consider themselves as part of one whole ecosystem network. This requires collaboration with tour operators operating in the area, ensuring the dissemination of a new tourism proposal able to highlight the potential of an experiential use of the area as a whole.

2. Tourism as a lever to protect the tangible and intangible heritage

Expanding the tourist offer in these habitats means bringing tourists closer to a direct and experiential discovery of the natural beauties that these places have to offer, crucial to developing greater environmental awareness. Equally, reinforcing responsible tourism in these habitats will also permit local people living in the area, particularly the younger generations, to have new and wider job prospects, eliminating the underlying causes for the abandonment of those places.

3. Tourism as the driver for new skills and competences

Giving life to quality, respectful, and slow tourism, capable of reawakening the typical values of the Mediterranean lifestyle requires acquiring the skills and competencies typical of new professional figures. We will have to involve both tourism and hospitality operators and the local population itself in acquiring new skills, the ones necessary to ensure the transition to green and digital tourism, not only to improve managerial skills and strengthen the hospitality sector but also to nurture a healthy ‘heritage pride,’ a flywheel to communicate better and valorize the mountain Mediterranean habitats.

Some of these activities have already been prototyped in Pollica: the Mediterranean School, to train real young explorers, storytellers and ambassadors of the Mediterranean identity; Mediterranean Woven Tales, aimed at fostering the dialogue with key Mediterranean heroes to understand and actively preserve the survival of this cultural heritage; the Paideia Digital Academy, to train children and youth on new digital tools in service of local tourism (adventure and videomaking, coding digital art, digital storytelling, 3D modeling and eco-design lab, blockchain and crypto).

Additional educational and training paths should also involve courses for environmental hiking guides, guides on territorial narration, environmental and tourism training for tour operators, training for certified forest bathing guides and for all involved to protect the Mediterranean food, wine, native crops, and traditional practices.

Among our ambitions, there is also the desire to set up the first Scuola di Paesologia, a meeting place that starts from the pivotal role that small villages have and to overcome their current risks of disappearing.

4. Tourism as a way to increase the accessibility of Mediterranean mountain habitats

To date, there is a lack of connecting services between the villages and the main logistical hubs. Slow and responsible tourism can act as a driver to fill this gap and increase the accessibility of these areas under three different layers:

• in width: the tourism boost can improve the usability of the territory by establishing new connections (through hiking routes, cycle paths, new railway lines, new infrastructure) and/or upgrading existing ones to ensure a widespread accessibility
• in depth: tourism can increase the realization of universal accessibility and mobility of these habitats, including specific attentions for people with special needs (obstacle-free walkway, special signposting for the visually impaired, recovery of special wheelchairs suitable for hiking in nature, virtual platform to maximize the Mediterranean experience)
• in length: activating experiential tourism beyond the traditional tourist seasons. This aspect can be achieved by expanding the summer touristic offer (which is mainly characterized by hiking and cycle-tourism routes), with unconventional touristic forms: educational and didactic tourism, through experiential school trips; cultural and food and wine tourism, through field experiences, tastings and real explorations of agricultural realities; business tourism, welcoming those who work remotely, equipping their accommodation offer with digital services; wellness tourism, enhancing the power of ‘Mediterranean living’ as a means of regeneration for psychophysical wellbeing, body care and relaxation.

5. Tourism as the tool to better communicate & sustain local economies

Regenerative tourism can take care of the immense heritage of Mediterranean habitats if a shared charter of values is clearly communicated. Its main ingredients should include the value of time, slowness; care of oneself, of the environment, and of others; diversity the uniqueness of the history and stories of the area; community here, you are invisible to no one; conviviality and the gift of welcoming; silence and the power of listening. This is a form of tourism that, in the end, will be able to support and sustain local and traditional economies, characterized by unique (traditional ecological) knowledge, experience, and skills, strengthening the educational role but also ensuring the economic survival of these sectors.

Reconnecting the Mediterranean mountain habitats, improving accessibility without compromising the protection of their natural, human, and cultural richness, and directly supporting the survival of entire mountain ecosystems are among the main objectives of the Consortium for the touristic valorization of the Lands of the Mediterranean Diet.

It is conceived as a virtuous path that starts from the people, aggregating active and hard-working citizens and visionary administrators, to create new skills, professionalizing courses and employment opportunities; favoring the birth of new entrepreneurship and new cooperative forms capable of meeting the implementation of services and infrastructural adjustments, and finally branding and promoting aggregated tourism products.

By focusing on the Mediterranean Diet as a model of Integral Ecological Regeneration, the project is designed to valorize dormant resources and obliges us to think and act systemically, orienting all actions towards creating inclusive prosperity.

“In nature, we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This is our chance to translate this sentence in support of the Mediterranean habitats.