Large-scale Irrigation Impacts Socio-cultural Values

Large-scale irrigation is a form of agricultural intensification aimed at increasing productivity and adapting to climate change. However, we know little about how large-scale irrigation affects socio-cultural values over nature's contributions to people (NCP) in agrarian systems. In this artic...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Albizua, Amaia|||0000-0001-8381-5288, Pascual, Unai|||0000-0002-5696-236X, Corbera, Esteve|||0000-0001-7970-4411
Tipo de documento: artigo
Data de publicação:2019
País:España
Recursos:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositório:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglês
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:201592
Acesso em linha:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/201592
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.12.017
Access Level:Acceso aberto
Descrição
Resumo:Large-scale irrigation is a form of agricultural intensification aimed at increasing productivity and adapting to climate change. However, we know little about how large-scale irrigation affects socio-cultural values over nature's contributions to people (NCP) in agrarian systems. In this article, we fill this gap by investigating how a large-scale irrigation project in Navarre, Spain, has affected farmers' values in relation to their farming systems and the local environment. We find that large-scale farmers who participate in the irrigation project value more highly regulating NCP than small-scale farmers who have not adopted such technology, while the latter hold higher values for non-material NCP related to cultural identity and traditional knowledge and experience. These findings suggest that the adoption of large-scale irrigation technology is associated with a set of values that underestimate the long-term ecological effects of agricultural intensification and neglect the relevance of traditional farming in sustaining more ecologically and culturally diverse landscapes.