The Alliance on Terraced landscapes

The triad of ITLA Journals

ITLA is an alliance of local, national, regional networks with more than 300 members from 35 countries with mountain ranges, where terraces have been invented and constructed for the production of food in optimum conditions – a global heritage of humankind. After three international conferences in Peru (2014), Italy (2016) and in the Canary Islands (2019). ITLA is an alliance of local, national, regional networks and associations. Our guiding principles for the promotion of terrace farming are written in the Padova Manifest, and our activities of organising conferences and local encounters, promoting publications, lobbying for the recognition of terraced landscapes as human heritage, and linking people, researchers, activists, guardians dedicated to terraces are defined in our Action Plan.

Our concern has been and is to preserve the knowledge and wisdom about terraced landscapes. Terraced landscapes experienced disenchantment with the process of industrialisation of agriculture, therefore we aim at a process of reenchanting the terraces and its diverse food crops as part of the recovery of Food Sovereignty for the wellbeing of the people.

With this intention, ITLA has been publishing the following three journals since 2020 (http://www.itla.si): • The Journal on Terraced Landscapes (JOTL) which contains research papers and scientific

studies on terraced landscapes that have intensified in recent decades. • The Art of Terraced Landscapes Journal which includes all kinds of artistic expressions. • The ITLA Journal, which collects and presents experiences of our networks and members

and includes short descriptions of terraced landscapes and collective action, voices from the terraced fields in collected testimonies, presentation of successful and exciting initiatives by local farmers and gardeners, conclusions about the value and relevance of terraced landscapes which have been the results of our encounters and deliberations of our movement of terrace lovers and researchers. We also provide space in this ITLA Journal for the future activities of the alliance and the methodologies and contents of the forthcoming 5th Congress in Bhutan.

Membership and Newsletter

The ITLA Journal stands on its own, it does not replace the ITLA Newsletter, which contains messages from our members about their activities, announcements of meetings and courses, publications. In the Newsletter we send out updated news of events and actions, not long descriptions or analysis. We invite our ITLA members to contribute to the ITLA Journal with their stories from the field, their review of the network activities as well as proposals for the Alliance and its governance.

ITLA Committee Meeting and European Day of Terraced Landscapes

The pandemic has reduced and nearly stopped our collective activities of meetings, conferences and face-to-face work on terraced landscapes. In August 2019 we could hold the last ITLA Committee Meeting in Goriška Brda in Slovenia after the European Day of Terraced Landscapes in Vrtovin. We expect to be able to organize the Second European Day of Terraced Landscapes in 2023 and have the opportunity to reunite the ITLA Committee for the preparation of the contents and format of the 5th Congress on Terraced Landscapes in Bhutan in 2024.

Contents of this issue

This issue of the ITLA Journal includes the Congress results from Spain (2019), the information about the discussions and activities of the Peruvian section of ITLA led by the Center Bartolome de las Casas from Cusco and the information about traditional irrigation in Europe as a candidate for world heritage of UNESCO.

Congress results from Spain

During the First International Terraced Landscapes Conference in 2010 in Mengzi, China, 53 participants constituted the International Terrace Landscapes Alliance (ITLA), and all participants endorsed the Honghe Declaration, which has oriented ITLA’s commitment to preserve, protect and promote terraced landscapes and cultures:

“In order for the terraces to survive, we must combine a respect for tradition and indigenous knowledge with modern methods and expertise. It is only in this way that we can guarantee a healthy future for the terraces and the unique human contribution that they represent.”

The guiding methodological principle of the 4th ITLA World Congress of La Gomera and in Macaronesia about the Re-enchantment of the Terraced Landscapes was the creation of democratic spaces for deliberation between the inhabitants, the activists as well as the researchers of the terraced landscapes in the mountainous and coastal regions of the world. After fieldwork on 8 islands the 4 working groups of Living, Wisdom, Learning and Working discussed in La Gomera their topics, visions and proposals for action, which were presented graphically by the team created by Carlos Jimenez at La Laguna. The presentations of the 4 groups were summarized as the conclusions of the 4th Congress by Tessa Matteini from UNISCAPE (Florence, Italy), Michel Pimbert from CAWR, Coventry University (UK), and Lučka Ažman, the scientific coordinator of the Congress and professor from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

ITLA Peru dialogue processes since 2020

Following the work of Mourik Bueno de Mesquita the Center Bartolome de las Casas and its director Carlos Herz has committed to constitute the Peruvian network and section of ITLA by organizing thematic online conferences with researchers, activists and farmers. The pandemic had the impact on the local communities as due to the contact restrictions of the national policy thousands of people lost their employment and walked back to their mountain communities. Terraced fields then were planted again with food crops for self consumption and local markets. ITLA Peru has proposed to implement a research project in Cusco and in more mountain regions about Women and Terraces and the strengthening of the wisdom and voices of Quechua women farmers for the recovery of the abandoned terraces (70 % of the historically terraced lands).

The Tanada system in Japan

Profesor Yamaji Eiji from Tokyo University, head of the scientific Tanada Research Association, presents the definition of Tanada terraced paddy fields (about 10% of the Japanese rice fields) in mountain areas and the creation of a state policy to support the Tanada system. One measure has been the dissemination of the ownership program, which has built strong bonds between urban citizens and the rural farmers to keep the rice fields alive and productive. Urban people commit to work on the fields during the seasonal tasks, support financially the local farmer group and benefit from the harvest of high-quality rice. The pandemic has affected the program as travel was restricted and the urban ‘owners’ not always could continue their commitment of working on the fields.