The Burren

The Burren is a karstic mountain range covering about 360 km2 on the West coast of Ireland. Its internationally renowned landscape concentrates a number of rare and protected habitats (limestone pavements, turloughs, caves, orchid-rich calcareous grasslands, etc).

This ecological heritage is now threatened by agricultural over-intensification on one hand, and abandonment on the other, both of which agri-environmental schemes (Regulation 2078/92) and conservation policy (National Park, SACs) have failed to halt. A key to a more sustainable development lies in the adaptation of 'traditional farming' (TF) to modern needs. Originating around 1900, the Burren TF ended with CAP (1973) and agri-environmental payments (1994), which subsidised, respectively, farm intensification and specialisation, and farm extensification and 'ecologisation'.

This rapid and contradictory evolution of professional 'best practices' generated widespread confusion. It fuelled museological approaches that tend to 'protect' farming systems from any market activity. Considering that markets were a driving force behind the development of TF and earlier farming systems, this project argues that any sustainability model, even in high nature value areas such as the Burren, will have to entail a fair dose of market competitiveness. As products, processes and institutional forms that combine economic value with environmental and social acceptance, eco-innovations are privileged tools for building such a model.