Marina FUSCHI, Dipartimento di Economia, Italy
Silvia SCORRANO, Dipartimento di Lettere, Arti e Scienze Sociali. Università degli Studi G. d'Annunzio, Chieti-Pescara, Italy
Abruzzo is the Italian Region with the largest number of sheep tracks, that are part of a complex system of grassy paths that joined the Regions Abruzzo, Molise and Apulia.
Abruzzo landscape has been strongly shaped by the practice of transhumance, which supported the process of urban transformation and economically sustained the social fabric.
The inclusion, in 2019, of transhumance in the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage gave a chance to rethink and revamp regional initiatives aimed at defining projects for the enhancement of sheep tracks which testify the will to create new tourist opportunities (and not only) for the territories involved and to denounce poor coordination capacity and financial and operational limits.
In the renewed way of doing tourism (slow tourism, slow travel), amplified by the pandemic scenario, as well as of experiencing the crossing of territories as a substantial moment of the journey itself, there emerges the bet of “Parcovie 2030 - The Transhumance that unites”, that is an interregional cooperation project led by Abruzzo Region. Such a project will be called upon to deal with the need to predict and structure a direct involvement of local communities, if it is true that Intangible Heritage, considered as a social event within human groups that produce and live it, would be impossible to preserve if not through the participation of local communities, that have the task of identifying and recreating it in their social environment (Tucci R., 2013).
The aim of this paper is to verify the fulfillment of the different projects (with a critical assessment of the role played by governance), considering the real potentialities of the territory, also with regard to the demographic and socio-economic capital endowment shown by the areas that are crossed by these paths, in the context of a wider marginality due to the dual structure of Abruzzo, based as it is on weak mountain areas and strong coastal areas.
Mots clés : sheep tracks|projects|territory|tourism|Abruzzo
A104704ss