Paper short abstract:

Intersections of intangible heritage and safeguarding the environment reveal divergent temporalities. Drawing on ethnographic research with artisans in the Mediterranean wetlands, the paper shows how they carefully weave their craft through and against particular imaginaries of ecological futures.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the ambiguous relationship between intangible heritage and ecological futures. It draws on ethnographic research with basket-makers harvesting plants for the craft in the Mediterranean wetlands. The artisans consider themselves the gardeners of the lagoons, collecting plants from the Sardinian waterscapes . However, the looming threat of coastal erosion and climate change leads to new environmental policies that reconfigure relations between waterscapes and communities on the island. Recent initiatives to protect the lagoons from anthropogenic change seek to restrict human access to the waterscapes, affecting the lives of the basket-makers.

The paper explores what the ambiguities of environmental protection and heritage (safeguarding) practice reveal about the emergent workings of time. The local safeguarding projects, part of the broader efforts to protect global Ramsar sites, highlight the diverging times of the waterscape heritage ecologies. These include the ebbs and flows of the wetlands, the multispecies rhythms of the lagoon’s gardening, the transient presences of migrating birds, the Zeitgeist of sustainability, the timelines of environmental protection projects, the heritage imaginaries of timeless traditions, and the repeated sequences of efforts to modernise southern Italy. The paper argues that the temporalities of wetlands offer ways of reimagining heritage. It demonstrates that rather than “catching up” with the inevitabilities of landscape protection, the basket-makers carefully weave their craft through and against particular imaginaries of ecological futures.