09 EU Climate Governance: Turning the Climate Crisis into a Regional Turning Point - Contemporary Restoration and Innovation in Montado Adaptation

By He Hanyu

The term Montado may not be unfamiliar to those who follow the Satoyama Initiative and forest-based economy. It comes from Portuguese, and is called dehesa in Spanish. It refers to the traditional agro-silvo-pastoral system or multifunctional woodland prevalent in the Iberian Peninsula in the southwestern Mediterranean region. Its types, products and management patterns can be adjusted according to geographical location, altitude, and human and cultural activities. Therefore, how to combine scientific methods to study the advantages and disadvantages of each model and find the best management practices that promote rural economies and biodiversity continues to attract attention from all sectors.

However, fewer people know that although Portugal ranks first in the world in cork production and export volume, this diverse forest production system is in fact undergoing severe challenges from industrial decline and market competition. The following article will introduce the experience of the Montado project and how climate adaptation can alleviate the difficulties of industrial decline.

Facing the combined pressures of extreme climate, market competition and an aging population, how should rural areas position themselves?

In agro-silvo-pastoral systems such as Montado and dehesa, the main species are cork oak, oak and holm oak, which provide timber, mushrooms, pasture and honey, and their tree fruits such as acorns can be used as livestock feed. The horizontal and vertical spaces of the forest are also used to operate industries such as cattle and pig grazing, mushroom gathering, pasture cultivation and tourism.

Influenced by the "Wheat Campaign" after World War II and the food subsidy policies of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after the war, Montado, which was mainly forestry-based, could not compete with the returns of the secondary and tertiary industries under an atmosphere that encouraged production efficiency and the improvement of rural economies. Not only were large areas converted to agricultural and pastoral land and other uses, but forestry and its remaining agricultural and pastoral management methods were gradually replaced by modern, monocultural management techniques. Regions that continued to practice Montado became almost synonymous with poverty.

With the establishment of the EU, cross-border population movement became easier. Problems such as rural emigration and aging, and changes in industrial structure, further turned the declining Montado and land converted to single-use agriculture, forestry and grazing into a common phenomenon of desertification or abandonment. Rural areas dominated by small and medium-sized farms, limited by economies of scale and capital, often suffer more severe shocks and losses once they face environmental and market changes. Many small and medium-sized farms would rather abandon their land than produce more and lose more. The social and demographic problems arising from the severe decline of rural industries are also part of everyday life in the rural Iberian Peninsula, and are not a phenomenon unique to Japan or Taiwan, China.

Behind the decline of Montado, not only has the Mediterranean landscape and plant and animal habitats been drastically changed, threatening the survival of endangered protected species living in woodland, such as the Iberian lynx and the Spanish imperial eagle, but the relationship between residents and rural industries and local society has also been greatly reshaped. It further means that the environmental knowledge and practices accumulated over many years through Montado, this ancient economic activity, are becoming unsustainable day by day as its area shrinks. Many EU and related ecological experts are deeply concerned about how to maintain Montado activities and area, and to reconcile the needs of rural livelihoods and ecological conservation.

Is climate change a crisis or a turning point? Shared connections across climate zones

Unexpectedly, climate change has brought a glimmer of new possibility for the promotion of Montado. Many farmers have observed that modern monocultural forest species, livestock and agricultural management, when confronted with unpredictable heatwaves, forest fires, extreme precipitation and plant pests and diseases, not only find existing rules of thumb inadequate, but also find risks hard to diversify, resulting in heavy losses. By contrast, farms arranged in the traditional Montado way have the opportunity, through diversified use and management adjustments, to spread the impacts brought by climate change and keep losses within an affordable range as much as possible.

In addition, differences in climate impacts among regions in the same climate zone have also stirred farmers' vigilance about climate adaptation and their willingness to try restoring Montado. Some Portuguese farmers noticed that the damage suffered by Spanish agro-silvo-pastoral systems, because their geographical location is more affected by the strength of the westerlies, occurred earlier, manifested more extremely and had more severe impacts than the climate difficulties encountered by Portuguese agriculture.

The sense of crisis urging early prevention against ending up in the same situation as rural Spain created an opportunity for cooperation with local farms. However, the Portuguese local NGO that proposed and implemented the project, the Association for the Defense of the Heritage of Mértola (Associação de Defesa do Património de Mértola, ADPM), did not limit the adaptation plan to a specific national border or agricultural technique. Instead, it connected rural areas in Spain and Portugal in the same climate zone to restore Montado together and bring it into the vision of a regional sustainable development outlook.

The immediate question that followed was: how can environmental conservation benefits be effectively increased, long-established modern agricultural management methods be changed, and, while gradually restoring Montado management methods and area, farm livelihoods and regional socioeconomic needs also be taken into account, so as to achieve the long-term goal of building climate adaptation capacity?

When traditional knowledge meets monitoring science: the introduction of climate scenario adaptation workshops

Although farmers had already realized the importance of restoring traditional farming methods, they were troubled by not knowing where to start, and worried that exploring on their own would take a long time and enormous costs. Therefore, the urgent task of the Montado adaptation project was first to understand what impacts and shocks climate change actually brings.

With the support of experts and technologies in environmental science and environmental monitoring, ADPM selected 12 small and medium-sized farms from areas in Portugal and Spain that still retained some Montado as pilot sites, investigated each pilot site's climate and extreme scenarios, location, temperature, precipitation and hydrology, soil and microorganisms, ecological diversity, and interviewed them about farm history, crops, climate impacts and livelihood conditions. They conducted vulnerability analysis of climate change, baseline reports and long-term monitoring and estimation, and assessed what adjustments were needed in farm configuration and crop selection.