Ricollegare energia e territorio: il paesaggio come intermediario : alcune riflessioni a partire dai risultati del progetto Ressources

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN ENERGY DEVELOPMENT AND THE TERRITORY BY THE MEANS OF LANDSCAPE
The actual transition to non-carbon energies is changing our territories. Energy and the territory are in fact strictly linked, since production, transportation, consumption of energy happen in the space and heavily influence landscape transformation. Nevertheless on one side energy policies did not adopt any territorial approach in designing this transition, and on the other side landscape policies and planning rarely include energy dimension. There is then a need of bridging the gap between energy and the territory. This can be done developing research at the crossroads of landscapes and energies (Nadai and Van den Horst, 2010).
This article presents some results of the international research “Ressources paysagères et ressources énergétiques dans les montagnes sud-européennes. Histoire, comparaison, expérimentation » (Landscape resources and energy resources on the south European mountains. History, comparison, experiments), that worked on the landscapes of hydropower, under a geo-historical point of view. Its main objective is to analyse the “landscapes of energy” and the social representations connected, today and in the past, with the development of energy infrastructure. The project focused on hydropower development from the end of the XIX century until nowadays, in four different European mountainous study areas. On this basis, the research tried to identify some tools for a “mediation paysagère”, a mediation by the means of landscape, that can help actors in conceiving together energy project and territorial project. Landscape seems able to bridge the gap between energy development and the territory. The question is how to make its role of interface emerge, activating its underlying character of intermediator. As the article shows, studying mountain landscape helps to reveal and to highlight the complex interrelations among hydropower development and the territory. Since landscape links people and the territory, it can be used as a tool to recognise territorial potential of energy development, giving back to energy its spatial and social dimension. In the energy field, the discourse on landscape is normally focused on the potentially negative impact of infrastructure associated with the exploitation of renewable energy. This exclusively “visual” landscape appears on one side as an obstacle to the development of new energies, on the other side something to be protected against them. Our research aims to contribute to the current debate, testing the landscape as a tool to ensure that the choices on energy become a strategic element of territorial concerted projects, able to take charge of the complex relationship between society / territory / environment. The research identifies and tests some methods to use the landscape as an instrument of intermediation, as a reference to be shared among the actors involved. This would happen making the geohistorical and socio-ecological complexity of landscape accessible to them. The landscape brings deep traces of the relationship between man and energy. This awareness allows us to read landscape through energy, showing how energy is inherent in the forms and transformations of the landscapes itself. To achieve this, it is necessary to question landscape as a witness, showing how the energy sector have influenced its transformations. Stakeholders must be able to access information and data included in the landscape-archive. To reading landscape through energy we need a new specific knowledge, a geohistorical research collecting materials useful to build what we called “scénarios paysagers de l’énergie” (landscape scenarios of energy). This is a tool, both discursive and