The International Terraced Landscapes Alliance Journal 2021 Volume 2 Number 2

Women’s Contributions and Activism

Maruja Salas 

The International Terraced Landscapes Alliance Journal serves as a forum for the activities of the various terraced landscape networks and reflects the experiences of ITLA members and their local or national networks for the revitalisation of terraced landscapes and their custodians in different parts of the world - on all continents.

In this opportunity of Volume 2 Number 2 we present a mosaic of processes and activities by women taking place in specific terraced landscapes:

Arcens, Ardèche in France, a rehabilitation of a terraced garden from the 19th Century;
Valbrenta, Veneto, Italy, revisiting the local intiative “adopt a terrace”;
Yauyos, Lima Region, Peru, local perceptions of women about the heritage of terraces;
Cinque Terre, Italy, a multifaceted repertoire of local mobilization.

Monique Gadais, president of the Arcade Association in Arcens, contributes with a field case of landscape rehabilitation of the Garden site Clos du Pré-Nouveau in Arcens, a terraced site built at the end of the 19th century by a wealthy farmer. She introduces us to an intervention process initiated by one member of the local heritage association that mobilized several actors into collaborative actions. Local authorities, schools and heritage associations got engaged in the facilitation of creating public awareness to restore the garden with the purpose to learn about the historical, ecological and cultural aspects of dry stone wall practice and knowledge. 

Cinzia Zonta and Maruja Salas present a case in the logic and pace of the memory of places. This field experience of Adopt a Terrace started in 2010 and faces complex and dynamic processes with the ‘villagers’ challenging the members of the association to a continuous rethinking of their activities. The reflection and action flow among the members has brought them to a point of redesigning the future plans for the coming years with new impulses in terms of sustainable transformations of terraced landscapes in Valbrenta.

This Yauyos contribution was written by a team of researchers of the University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada). It deals with the cultural perceptions of terraces as a heritage, from the perspective of four Andean women from the Nor-Yauyos Nature Reserve. It is structured by seven questions that trigger very personal responses revealing the diversity of thinking and feeling among rural women.
Cinque Terre in Liguria, Italy. The contribution from Margherita Ermirio presents to us a singular case of field activism that breaks with many conventions of classical implementation of project ideas in the terraced landscapes. The description of the activities start as local origin in Vernazza but very soon it expands to regional, national and global spheres without losing its local roots, the beauty and stability of the stone walls in Cinque Terre. 

These four experiences show the importance of sharing different styles of activism. They can inspire us to reflect and act by gaining new insights about the involvement of local people, professionals, politicians in the manyfold transformation needed to restore life in the terraced landscapes.