Climate change has strong impacts on soil conservation and agricultural productivity, with severe consequences on smallholders in developing countries, but virtually no research has been carried out so far on this issue. Therefore, it is necessary to foster the implementation of participatory projects to help communities deal with new difficulties. Sustainable soil management can reduce and even reverse land degradation, helping farmers to adapt to climate change effects. Progress toward sustainability cannot be implemented in small rural communities regardless of local knowledge, which can be addressed using participatory techniques. To this purpose the choice and use of indicators is essential to carry out correct assessments of soil vulnerability integrating local and technical knowledge. The purpose of this review was to study how the problem of building a set of integrated indicators to assess soil quality has been addressed so far and which participatory techniques have been more successfully employed, analyzing studies carried out in rural communities of developing countries. We found out that there is a lack of participated studies dealing with environmental issues. Those that do so address them only indirectly, being centered on present agricultural problems. The studies rarely feature a collaboration with social science experts, consequently the use of participatory techniques lacks protocols and a standardized nomenclature to help in the transfer and generalization of experiences. Women are rarely involved and nearly exclusively in African countries: this could be related to social and cultural conditions, but needs more attention. Different aspects need to be improved to help the implementation of a successful approach in future projects. This review provides a tool to facilitate future interdisciplinary research on integration of local and scientific knowledge and will help to devise more successful strategies to tackle the challenges posed by climate change to smallholders in developing countries.

Many scholars today are deepening economic issues by looking at new paradigms based on the relationship between communities and the resources of the territory. The proposals are different, mainly focusing on economic theories such as solidarity economy, a mix of theories and practices based on equity, sustainability, democracy, and reciprocity. The growing legislation on solidarity economy implies to develop tools to support Administrations and Communities throughout the process of effective realization. The aim of this study is to propose a methodology for evaluating the Vocation to Solidarity Economy (VSE) by means of a composite indicator (VSE index) and apply it to the territory of Friuli Venezia Giulia Region in the northeast of Italy. A series of basic factors concerning social, economic, and environmental aspects was defined by multidisciplinary experts and used for VSE index calculations. The spatialization of VSE index allows the assessment of the vocation of territories in supporting the paths to become Communities of Solidarity Economy as defined by a recent regional law. As results of subsequent VSE spatialization we obtain the maps which highlight different characteristics within the Region (i.e. urban/rural relations) helping local administrations to improve current policies towards sustainability.

Climate change, ecological challenges, and economic and social crises imply paradigmatic and structural innovations. In the effort to drive transition toward sustainability, local communities often take the lead, mobilize support, and organize initiatives based on the principles of solidarity economy. Our study presents a qualitative evaluation and comparison of three local bottom-up initiatives from Friuli Venezia Giulia, a Northern Italian region, each following alternative and unique models of production and consumption of wheat and flour. The reconstruction of the transition paths of the experiences, together with documental analysis and interviews, allowed us to deduce the influence of alternative approaches and subsequent degree of effectiveness in building a community and driving it toward sustainability.

Green infrastructure (GI) networks comprising multiple natural and artificial habitats are important tools for the management of ecosystem services. However, even though ecosystem services are deeply linked with the state of biodiversity, many approaches to GI network planning do not explicitly consider the ecological needs of biotic communities, which are often threatened by anthropic activities even in presence of protected areas. Here, to contribute in fill this gap, we describe an easy-to-apply, biodiversity-centric approach to model an ecological network as a backbone for a GI network, based on the ecological needs of a range of representative species. For each species, ideal habitats (nodes) were identified, and crossing costs were assigned to other habitat types depending on their compatibility with the species ecology. Corridors linking the nodes were then mapped, minimizing overall habitat crossing costs. We applied the method to the Isonzo–Vipacco river area in Northern Italy, highlighting a potential ecological network where nodes and corridors occupied 27% and 11.8% of the study area, respectively. The prospective of its conflicts with anthropic activities and possible solutions for its implementation was also discussed. Our method could be applied to a variety of situations and geographic contexts, being equally useful for supporting the protection of entire biocenoses or of specific sensitive species, as well as enhancing the ecosystem services they provide.

Since 2012, the University of Udine has been directly involved in research to study the Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG) solidarity-economy sector, even collaborating to develop the first regional law on the solidarity economy (ESol). Recently, the university has implemented a project to profoundly investigate the practices that can be part of the Regional ESol tissue, based on the indications provided by the Regional Law 4/2017, to delimit and characterise them, know their distribution over the regional territory, and divide them by territorial areas (thinking about the activation of future economic-solidarity communities) and sectors (thinking about the activation of future economic-solidarity chains). After an initial qualitative analysis at the conceptual and values levels, and after building a database of regional ESol realities—useful for further qualitative–quantitative in-depth analysis in the future, too—we mapped and georeferenced the FVG ESol framework, obtaining indications on where to intervene to enhance ESol local supply chains as active laboratories for future bioregional territorial development, and to understand where the activation of local solidarity-based community assemblies is possible, to support local solidarity initiatives as the Regional Law states. The results show a regional picture rich in economic-solidarity realities spread throughout the territory with a wide variety of proposals but still struggling to concretely apply the tools provided by the Regional Law even though they are acting in the microsphere as cells of sustainable and solidarity-based “re-appropriation” and “re-inhabiting” of the territory. In this paper, we want to present the project results by discussing the size and characteristics of the regional solidarity-economic sector and the opportunity inherent in developing a different logic of “doing enterprise”, combining the need to produce wealth with maintaining, preserving, and enhancing our environment, cultivating an economical and productive culture distinct from the one still prevailing today, and making our territories “places of life”.