Langhe, Roero and Monferrato join forces with Burgundy to defend Unesco hills
Posted on: 27-03-2021 om 06:14:59
| Karina Imschoot
Langhe, Roero and Monferrato join forces with Burgundy to defend Unesco hills
Creation of a climate change study centre to promote strategies for protecting wine-growing landscapes
The creation of a climate change study centre on the Langhe Roero and Monferrato wine-growing landscape, in partnership with Burgundy. This is the ambitious project on which our UNESCO site is working.
"In the last few days - explains Roberto Cerrato, director of the Heritage Association of Vineyards of Southern Piedmont - we held a webinar with the director of Climat of Burgundy and shared the need for an increasingly intensive exchange of data and planning. The design of their site, which is also recognised by UNESCO, is very similar to ours in terms of history and tradition: small plots, high quality, recognised throughout the world, attention to the landscape".
The exchange will serve to enrich the project "Technological innovation to support tradition versus climate change" that Langhe Roero and Monferrato have already launched in 2019, thanks to funding of around 200 thousand euros from the Ministry of Culture. The programme aims to deepen the theme of the impact and vulnerability to climate change of the territory of the Unesco site and to realise a proposal of adaptation strategies that allow the preservation of the value of the area according to two connected and interdependent aspects: the protection of the values of the site against extreme climatic and environmental events and the active participation of citizens in this now increasingly emerging theme.
"Our aim," the site director further explains, "is to establish a Research Centre on Climate Change related to the wine-growing landscape of the Langhe Roero and Monferrato, with the collaboration of the University of Turin, which is already a partner in the Climate Change project, the Astiss Centre for Hill Studies in Asti, the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Turin, professional associations related to agricultural issues and the Piedmont region. On 20 May Cerrato will give a lecture at a national meeting organised by Unesco, where he will present the results of a study of the places recognised in the world in relation to the wine landscape.
The Wine Atlas is in fact a book that is constantly being updated. The most renowned wine-growing regions today are located in fairly restricted geographical areas, which automatically makes them more sensitive to the effects of the climate than is normally the case for other crops. But global warming is changing this geography. In recent years, many countries without tradition have joined the great wine family: Russia, Canada, Japan, Poland, England and even Sweden, where 10 hectares of vines can withstand the great cold.
Will they become the new competitors of Piedmont and Burgundy? Who knows? But we can certainly work more seriously on the fundamental theme of sustainability, to ensure a balanced ecosystem and nurture biodiversity, with the aim of keeping the territory healthy and countering the effects of these changes from the outset.
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