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Beyond “emptied Spain”: climate change, depopulation, and globalisation in rural areas

Sergio Villamayor-Tomas, Daniel Gaitán Cremaschi, Beatriz Pierri-Daunt, and Leticia Santos de Lima, Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA-UAB); Esteve Corbera, ICTA-UAB e Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avancats (ICREA)
Project selected in the Social Research Call 2019

According to climate change projections, Spain will very likely suffer a reduction in average precipitation, an increase in average temperatures, and a higher frequency of heatwaves. At the same time, many Spanish rural areas are losing population and small-scale, family-farm landowners keep losing bargaining power in global agricultural trade. A mapping of the manifestations of these three threats across the more than 8,000 municipalities and 344 counties of rural Spain reveals important patterns. The counties where all or some of those threats manifest most clearly are located in Castilla y León, Navarra, and Castilla-La Mancha. That said, some municipalities within those counties are considerably more affected than others. A detailed look at how manifestations of climate change, depopulation, and globalisation* combine with each other reveals four clusters of territories. Rural development policy must address each of these contrasting realities if it aims to promote social wellbeing and environmental sustainability.
Key points
  • 1
       Climate change, depopulation, and the globalisation of agricultural trade are drivers of vulnerability, understood as the degree to which an area is susceptible to and is unable to cope with adverse socio-economic and environmental effects.
  • 2
       The distribution of vulnerability across rural areas in Spain is not homogeneous. The most vulnerable counties are located in the “vulnerability belt”, which covers Castilla y León (77% of whose counties are vulnerable), Navarra (43%), and Castilla-La Mancha (34%).
  • 3
       A detailed look at how manifestations of climate change, depopulation, and globalisation combine with each other reveals four groups of territories: an emptied and economically marginalised Spain; an economically coping but drying Spain; an eroding Spain, and an exporting Spain.
  • 4
       Rural development should tackle the vulnerability of rural municipalities in its multiple social and intergral environmental manifestations.
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