«I know the mayor of Biccari for a long time, since years ago he gave me a lift on the bus to go to Rome to demonstrate for the defense of health rights in the internal areas, when I was not yet a public administrator, but only an activist at the head of the movement “The Citizen is there“. I believe that Biccari e Agnonebut all of Alto Molise, we have many points in common from the point of view of territory and environmental resources, for these reasons the experience and teachings of the mayor who arrested and reversed depopulation in his small municipality in the Dauni mountains can be of stimulus and help”.
As Enrica Sciullosocial councilor of the Municipality of Agnonewho took part, in recent days, in the second lesson of the “School of Small Municipalities” to Castiglione Messer Marinoan intellectual workshop directed by the professor Rossano Pazzagli of UniMol. Speakers, in fact, the mayor of Biccari, in the Foggia area, the lawyer Gianfilippo Mignognaand the professor Augusto Ciuffettihistorian and professor at the Polytechnic University of Marche.
Professor Ciuffetti himself opened the proceedings by explaining how “never, throughout history, have the so-called internal areas been considered marginal territories from a social, economic and cultural point of view”. The inhabited Apennines, “the civilization of the Apennines” as Ciuffetti calls it, has indeed always had, at least until the 1950s, a role of irrefutable socio-economic and also cultural centrality. Cyclically, over the centuries, the inhabited Apennines have experienced phases of population and depopulation, the latter triggered massively by industrialization which boomed between the 1950s and 1970s. «At that moment, but from the outside, a process of homologation begins which causes the mountains and inhabited internal areas to lose their centrality» remarked Ciuffetti.
A sort of induced depopulation, aimed at supplying the large factories on the coast with manpower. And Alto Molise also knows something about it, with the migration towards the industrial area of Sangro or on the Adriatic coast of Chietino. «Today we are witnessing a rediscovery of the Apennines, – added the history teacher – also as a response to the extreme climate changes that are being recorded. From the collective management of resources, including environmental ones, it is possible to restart and relaunch the role of the Apennines, a new model which among other things would be absolutely consistent with the role that the civilization of the Apennines has had over the centuries”.
Collective resource managementthe mayor of Biccari, a small municipality in the mountains, started from this postulate Dauni, which has not only stopped, but even reversed depopulation. «My grandparents did, like everyone else, i lumberjacks, because they lived in close dependence on the over eight hundred hectares of forest that surround our town. – began Mayor Mignogna – After years during which they thought of “remove dirt from shoes“, to emancipate ourselves, to change our lifestyle, we decided to go back, drawing from history, as Professor Ciuffetti suggested, returning to the forest, in the forest, reactivating, first of all, a wood supply chain, but always in perspective of sustainable forest management”. An example of “retro-innovation“, as Professor Pazzagli would say.
A return to the past, therefore, to relaunch the future. A return to the forest, the first environment inhabited by man. «Our woods are multi functional. – added Mignogna – The forest is paths and trekking, with forty kilometers of created and marked routes; the forest is fun, with an adventure that attracts even the little ones; the forest is educational, with permanent training spaces and, immediately after Covid, it physically became the classroom for our school children; the forest is a showcase for the territory and its products; the forest hosts meetings, concerts, cultural events; the forest is an experience, with the possibility of living inside it, of sleeping inside the tree houses, in the bubble room transparent, with a view to the experiential tourism that it attracted only last year one thousand two hundred visitors who spent the night in the woods.”
This sustainable forest management, born from the public partnership, the Municipality, and private partnership, the very young local entrepreneurs, has reversed the demographic, social and cultural decline of Biccari, making it an example of good practices at a national and international level. New cooperatives born in the area, dozens and dozens of jobs, wealth and “stay”. «And it is precisely the media attention on these relaunch experiences that has triggered a return of the population, from all parts of the world. – explained Mayor Mignogna – A passage from Biccari on the CNN and on the houses for sale in our historic center it caused an overexposure which resulted in twenty thousand, already, precisely twenty thousand emailsof people interested in coming to live in our small mountain municipality.”
An explosion that led to the sale of forty houses, previously recovered and renovated, in the historic centre, triggering a turnover of over one million euros. «The project started from there “Hosting is good“, which later became a book. – Mignogna clarified – Today there are dozens of new families and residents in the town, fromArgentina, but from all over the world. New children feeding the school population and new experiences, cultural richness for everyone, even the local host community. I believe that this is what a mayor should do, not limit himself to ordinary administration. Must give a shock to the internal areas of the Apennines. We need a vision, a strategy; we have demonstrated that it is possible to reverse depopulation.”
«The circulation of ideas and the experience of good practices developed in other mountain municipalities are fundamental for us administrators and residents of Alto Molise to understand what and how to do to fight and stop or even reverse depopulation» he commented in closing the councilor Sciullo, ready to take inspiration from the small municipality of the Dauni mountains.
Woods, therefore environmental resources, e real estate assets abandoned, these are some of the “riches” that are certainly not lacking in Agnone and in Alto Molise, from which to start again to give new opportunities to the Apennines. To the middle mountain, to the inhabited mountain.
Francesco Bottone
Support the free press, even with 1 euro.
