Paper short abstract:

This paper explores relations between wetland conservation and land reclamation processes. It discusses the Bonifica Integrale (complete reclamation) implemented during the 1930s in Agro Pontino, Italy, and the subsequent development of wetland conservation in the region.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the emergence of the category of ‘wetland’ in conservation discourses in relation to the recent environmental history of Agro Pontino, in Italy. The imaginary of this region, which nowadays hosts four wetlands included within the Ramsar Convention, is dominated by the land reclamation process implemented by the Fascist regime in the 1930s, and named ‘Bonifica Integrale’ (Integral Reclamation). This process involved the drainage of the Pontine Marshes, the largest marshlands in Italy, followed by the colonisation of the area, by the foundation of three new towns, and by the creation of the Circeo National Park in 1934. The meaning of this process has to be framed within the negative perception of the Pontine Marshes, and of marshlands in general, from the ecological, social, and political perspectives. In fact during fascism the verb ‘bonificare’ (to reclaim), literally meaning ‘turning into good’, was frequently associated with the verb ‘redimere’ (to redeem), meaning the actual religious act of redeeming the land and its inhabitants from the power of evil represented by the Marshes.

Discussing ethnographic and historical materials this paper analyses how the Agro Pontino became entangled in various stages of landscape policy, local use and environmental ethics, thus exemplifying how landscapes change their meaning over time, according to political contingencies that often conceal local imaginaries, knowledges and ecologies. This example epitomises the process by which global categories of conservation, such as ‘wetland’, are implemented into local scenarios, demarcating new interests and constructing new landscapes.