An interdisciplinary approach for integrating landscape management in the Common Agricultural Policy: Application to the municipality of Mertola, Southern Alentejo, Portugal

This paper seeks to present the methodological approach of a case-studyat a local scale, in the south of Portugal, where the European UnionCommon Agricultural Policy (CAP) has significant impacts in terms ofenvironment, socioeconomic and landscape aspects.The municipality of Mertola is located in the south-eastern part of theAlentejo Region, in a marginal area in relation to socio-economicparameters and agricultural production. As in the region as a whole, thedominant land use system is the Montado in a diversified pattern, whichhas in the last decades been subject. to successive significant changes,raising questions as to future landscape quality, identity and therequired management. As in other European rural areas, thetransformations in agriculture and the productive function resulted inchanges in the landscape, which have impacts also on other functionssuch as conservation, environment balance, recreation, life support andpreservation of cultural identity. These other functions attract eachday more attention as a possible set of alternatives uses in marginalareas of Europe, such as Mertola. This actual context requires thus alandscape management based on integrated policies for the rural world,following the new perspectives of the CAP but also based on a deepknowledge of local landscape dynamics and requirements for preservationof identity. This project intends to evaluate and understand:(a) the changes that have occurred in the municipality in the lastdecades; and(b) how they have affected landscape pattern and also people'sperception and connections to this landscape identity.The intent is to build up proposals for a more integrated and locallyadapted formulation of CAP objectives and instruments. This paper willpresent the changes in landscape pattern and character registered in thestudy area for the last decades, the interdisciplinary methodologyadopted, as well as the results of the first phase of the project.