Contribution short abstract:

Drawing on the case of cork oak woodlands decline in the Andalusian mountains, we explore the unexpected processes of socio-economic restructuring which take advantage of the new resources which deforestation makes available.

Contribution long abstract:

Iberian cork oak woodlands are a good example of transforming mountain contexts “accelerated by climate change”. For some decades now, they have been going through a multi-factorial process of deforestation called “seca” in Spanish (and declínio in Portuguese). In the case of Los Alcornocales Natural Park (Southern Andalusia), oak decline is the result of the lack of traditional practices of socio-ecosystemic reinvigoration and a style of management focused almost exclusively on hunting and cork extraction. Game species overload makes tree regeneration impossible, while climate change weakens existing trees, thus facilitating the dissemination of the lethal oomycete Phytophtora cinnamomi. Cork oak woodlands decline has been a key factor for the resurgence of forest workers’ unionism in this region, mainly represented by the Andalusian Cork Workers and Muleteers Association (ACOAN). But deforestation has not been the source of damage, solastalgia and struggle. In a context of increasing wood availability, a novel trend consists in the development of entrepreneurial activities by several former forest workers. Although their “patios” (facilities where their workers process raw wood from the forest) are known by some local people as “funeral parlours of the natural park”, they are also responsible for a full employment situation. Beyond the problematic of the needed adaptation, our paper focus instead on the social restructuring processes that are developing in the context of local environmental transformations accelerated by climate change. We think this is a crucial perspective to understand (and face) the socio-environmental challenges that mountain regions are going through currently.