The sight of nature as an historical subject implies a change in the perspective when we reconstruct economic and social features, human relations, and technical innovation and finally the very idea of wealth. Researches in progress in the Institute are connected with the use of concept of "resource" in Northern and Southern Mediterranean regions.
Researchers in the Institute are contributing on topics such as forests, seas, water resources. Part of these researches has already been published on national and international journals and in books by important Italian publishers. Among the several themes we may mention: the functioning of reproductive systems; formal and informal norms on the use of resources; techniques and kinds of exploitation; rules; economic quantification in terms of employment, production, income; and, finally the analysis of the city as an ecological system involved in a variety of relations with the outside world by means of incoming and outcoming fluxes.
The Instute is, on these very topics, in contact with national and international institutions. Together with the Southern Institute for Historical and Social Research and with the "Meridiana. Review of History and Social Sciences" journal the Institute organized two congresses:
Resource and Environment in Modern Southern Italy (May 1999); Napoli sustainable (December 2001), which was partially financed by private and public institutions. Together with Campania Region, with the Committee for Water Policy and with the Institute for Eastern Studies, the Institute organized in Napoli (October 2001) a congress on Waters and development: a water policy fo future Mediterranean. With Plan Bleu (Unep), the Committee for Water Policy and French Foreing Office, a forum has been promoted on waters.
What were the ways natural resources took part in the growth and development of Mediterranean? What kinds of criteria and policies were used? What were usages and rules are possible for a sustainable exploitation?
Research results are part of a cultural plan able to produce textbooks for highschools and univerisites, with an interdisciplinary character; able, that is, to found a project of "environmental education" and to mobilize human resources towards new kinds of job for the safeguard of the environment and to make the most of natural resources.
Focus