Friday 17 and saturday 18 november – Gran Sasso Science Institute (L’Aquila)

Demographic issues and inland territories. The risks of depopulation

The majority of Italian municipalities have less than five thousand inhabitants. Many of them constitute those territories that common sense refers to as ‘inland areas’. They risk becoming depopulated within a few years. Medieval villages with centuries of history are facing the disturbing prospect of falling into oblivion. This dynamic, caused by an ageing population and low birth rate, calls for urgent reflection if we are to prevent part of our natural, social and cultural heritage from being marginalised.

About the issue of the relationship between inland territories and demography it may, therefore, be useful and urgent to reknit the thread of dialogue between believers and non-believers: that thin thread that the Magna Carta Foundation supports through the “To Caesar and to God” meetings, doing everything possible to ensure that it is not interrupted. This year, not by chance, the venue chosen for the meeting is L’Aquila, which can be considered the capital of inland territories. It will take place on 17 th and 18 th November. The dialogue can be structured starting from some solid premises, of which we will recall only a few essential and evocative features.

On the believers’ side, the Church’s repeated admonition to take care of Creation, our ‘Common Home’, should be emphasised. Just to refer to the most recent texts, we can point to the ‘Benevento Pastoral’ in which the Church calls for more attention and more opportunities for young people who choose to remain in their communities of origin, for families who choose to have children, and for those who decide to care for the elderly. Pope Benedict’s statement that demographic decline is depriving our society of the vitality and potential embodied in our children underlines the urgency of the challenge. Hence the Church’s invitation to politics to formulate proposals that can ensure the unified and inclusive growth of inland italian territories.

On the side of the non-believers, many of the worries expressed by the Church can be declined regardless of reasons of an exquisitely religious or even merely identity-related nature. The abandonment of vast swathes of the country, in fact, poses problems in terms of land management aggravated by recurring climatic crises, the loss of a substantial portion of GDP due to the decline of an economy that – if sustained – would present not insignificant margins for development; the social and health management of a segment of the population that is ageing without support from families or public structures, safety and respect for the law; as abandoned territories, they present a higher risk of criminal infiltration.

From these premises, the debate can be developed around concrete issues, with the aim of fostering solutions of a social, administrative and even legislative nature. Below are just a few of the issues that will be addressed, reflecting the richness and complexity of the topic: how and with what means to invest in social capital, in order to create new opportunities for sustainable development; how to strengthen the sense of belonging of local communities and, therefore, their social cohesion; how to support local economies, their diversification and the development of youth entrepreneurship; by what means, within what limits and with what guarantees to create a relationship between the depopulation of inland areas and the immigration phenomenon; how to boost education and skills training tailored to the specific needs of the territories; how to strengthen transport networks and digital infrastructures in order to ‘disintermediate’ to connect inland areas to wider markets, providing them with greater economic opportunities; whether and through which administrative reorganisation processes it will be possible to invest in ‘medium-sized towns’ as points of contact and coordination for villages and hamlets otherwise left without effective reference points.