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The social dimension as a driver of sustainable development: the case of family farms in southeast Spain

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Abstract

The social pillar has often been treated as an ‘add on’ in sustainable development studies, and analyses of its ‘proactivity’ in economic, environmental, and social transformations to sustainability outcomes are scant. The present paper looks at the social dimension as a key driver of sustainable development. Social factors in the farming system in southeast Spain are analyzed to show how family farms and their networks can integrate socio-economic and eco-social goals, promoting the generation of synergies and trade-offs between the dimensions of sustainability. This study contributes to existing debate on the role of family farms in the framework of European rural development.

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Notes

  1. Furthermore, many decisions and policies are frequently formulated in distant centers with little regard for local social, economic, or environmental consequences (Tokar 2008). From the local point of view, bottom-up participation in decision-making will permit a swifter and more specific response to problems of sustainability (Bridger and Luloff 2001).

  2. In addition, the social dimension should be considered a dynamic process with its own well-defined goals, rather than a side effect of economic or environmental goals.

  3. Similar to the bioeconomy model, this implies overcoming the traditional separation between the economic and social pillars, thus avoiding the overly economic and productive view of modern societies (Lehtonen 2004; Psarikidou and Szerszynski 2012).

  4. See Appendix (Fig. 5) for a simplified representation of this framework related to family farms.

  5. These components, i.e., use and management, are presented together because we consider that the indicators that are associated with them in the sector under study to be strongly interrelated.

  6. Moreover, it should be noted that the high concentration of greenhouses in this area seems to have had a positive impact on the struggle to combat climate change. This concentration implies a CO2 reduction (as it is absorbed by crops) while simultaneously acting as a brake on atmospheric warming. According to Campra et al. (2008), the ‘albedo’ (whiteness) effect that is generated by the plastic greenhouse covering reduced temperatures in the Almería ‘Poniente’ region by 0.75 degrees from 1983 to 2006. According to the surface shortwave radiative forcing (SWRF) data and local temperature trends, the recent development of greenhouse horticulture may have masked the local warming signals that were associated with the increase of greenhouse gases.

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Acknowledgments

This research was partially funded by Spanish MCINN and FEDER aid (Projects ECO2011-24930 and ECO2014-52268) and by the Junta de Andalucía (Project SEJ-5827, Consejería de Economía, Innovación y Ciencia).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Almería, Agrifood Campus of International Excellence (ceiA3), Almería, Spain

    Emilio Galdeano-Gómez, Juan Carlos Pérez-Mesa & Ángeles Godoy-Durán

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  1. Emilio Galdeano-Gómez
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  2. Juan Carlos Pérez-Mesa
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  3. Ángeles Godoy-Durán
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Correspondence to Emilio Galdeano-Gómez.

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Handled by Vinod Tewari, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) University, India.

Appendix

Appendix

See Fig. 5.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Family farms and related factors in an agrarian system following a bioeconomy model (without strict division of sustainability dimensions). Source: The authors based on Lehtonen (2004), Roome (2008) and Peeters (2011)

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Galdeano-Gómez, E., Pérez-Mesa, J.C. & Godoy-Durán, Á. The social dimension as a driver of sustainable development: the case of family farms in southeast Spain. Sustain Sci 11, 349–362 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-015-0318-4

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