cultivar_22_Final_EN

48 ANALYSIS AND PROSPECTIVE STUDIES CULTIVAR Issue 22 APRIL 2021 current rural development policy is more like a local development policy, thus revealing diffi- culty in encompassing more complex multilevel and multiscale issues. vi) The situation in point v) is especially simplistic in a context marked by the growing importance of cities as actors in food policy and dynamic drivers of rural areas; by the expansion of finan- cialization and intensification of a large part of agrifood systems; and, finally, by rising exposure and vulnerability to external factors like climate change and its effects, particularly advancing desertification. vii) In an increasingly com- plex and unpredictable context, and one in which the cycle of pro- duction modernisation starting with the urban industrial revolution has reached its end point (see the case of fossil fuels), the future of rural areas and their relationship with demographic processes must be seen from a dynamic per- spective of transition and transformation towards new models of growth and develop- ment. We understand now the demographic effects for rural areas of the failed traditional rural development model. Yet, we have to take on board its visible and potential conse- quences at the concep- tual and policy formu- lation level stemming from the first generation (urban industrial) and, above all, second generation (urban financial) of Portuguese social and economic modernisa- tion. viii) According to the observations above, rural depopulation must be avoided (where it has yet to occur), resisted (where it seems reversible or controllable) or managed (where it is hard to stem) using an integrated approach to territorial development benchmarked against a national strategic vision like the National Programme for Spatial Planning Policy (PNPOT). The structural changes cannot be solved by good will and even less by naivety. The demographic dynamics in rural areas are the result of complex interactions between local and general biophysi- cal characteristics and socioeconomic models of development. Public policies have an important but limited role to play in regulating these interac- tions. In fact, as explained in previous sections, the geo- graphically diverse nature of historical demographic evo- lution in rural areas depends more directly on societal and economic choices than on political decisions or policy actions. This statement is not intended to minimise the importance of public measures or to remove state responsibility, which would be ethically unac- ceptable. On the contrary, this is an appeal to recog- nise that structural changes will be needed to over- come structural problems. Depopulation in many of the country’s rural areas is the inevitable result of the growth models that have prevailed in successive historical periods. Between inevitability as a leg- acy of the past and the pres- ent, and transformation as an imperative for the Portugal of tomorrow, we will have to find the wisdom and vision to build new interdependen- cies between ecology, society and the economy allowing, through a combination of both fast and incremental changes, to pursue transition paths leading to new sustainable geographies, some with a dense and dynamic population, and others with scarce human occupation but with healthy ecosystems adapted to new global biophysical challenges. … rural depopulation must be avoided (where it has yet to occur), resisted (where it seems reversible or controllable) or managed (where it is hard to stem) The structural changes cannot be solved by good will and even less by naivety. The demographic dynamics in rural areas are the result of complex interactions between local and general biophysical characteristics and socioeconomic models of development. Public policies have an important but limited role to play in regulating these interactions.