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Paper short abstract:

This proposal concerns the natural ruins of the Fiemme valley, in the aftermath of the Vaia disaster. The several crashes sites in this Alpine valley witness a vulnerability culturally inscribed in the landscape, making the management of this forest commons even more arduous for the community.

Paper long abstract:

With more than 1 million and 400 thousand m³ of wood, the Fiemme Valley is one of the most devastated in all of northern Italy by the passage of Vaia (October 2018). The storm acted as a revelatory crisis, pointing out the unsustainability of precise historical ways of inhabiting the valley. The Fiemme territory is haunted by past residual agency, deeply rooted in the forests (Martellozzo 2021). The Vaia disaster resulted from the cultural remodelling of two landscapes: the forest one, implemented on a local scale through monoculture practices (Scott 1984); the atmospheric one, implemented on a global scale with the emission of greenhouse gases. For this reason, this problematic past has not been exhausted over the centuries but continues to influence the present. The confrontation with this legacy is made more complex by the nature of the forest heritage, which substantially constitutes a commons (Ostrom 1990). It is managed by the Magnificent Community of Fiemme, an institution that has played a crucial role in modelling the landscape over the past seven centuries. The vision of devastated mountain slopes and ruined forests deeply affected the inhabitants, rekindling their interest in the environmental management of the valley. But the several crash sites that mark the valley are by no means empty ruins: they represent symbolic and ecological palimpsests (Zanini & Viazzo 2020), in which the community is trying to inscribe a new future.