Centuries-long interactions between men and the mountains have shaped rural landscape, local biodiversity, rural culture and societies.
However, urbanization and rural depopulation trends have compromised this delicate equilibrium, posing major concerns to the persistence of the cultural, economic and natural heritage, in particular in the Alps. Land ownership fragmentation is one of the leading factors of mountain depopulation in Latin Alps, hindering development and profitability of mountain agriculture. Land Consolidation Associations provide an alternative land asset management model, characterized by shared planning, management and use of multiple small land parcels. The paper presents the emergence and development of this co-ownership model in Italy, with a specific focus on the Land Consolidation Association of the Erbezzo Valley, at the foot of the Julian Alps. The Asfo Erbezzo case represents a successful experience of re-composition, collective management and recovery of small, underexploited, and often abandoned land parcels, and a unique sustainable development model, whose benefits are shared among original land owners as well as the local community as a whole.
