“Beauty island” and “the mountain in the sea” are the most common terms to designate Corsica. They capture the insular topography characterized by the dual alpine and Mediterranean climates. As one the most wooded Mediterranean island, olive trees (Olea europaea L.) are abundant and imbricated with the island’s history, culture and development. The recognition of “Oliu di Corsica” (Corsican olive oil) as an Appellation Of Origin (“AOP”) encodes that exclusive terroir-based causal link where the primary input is climate.
Although olive trees grow well under harsh conditions, studies reveal that climate change and its effect on aspects of terroirs such as rainfall, water availability, soil quality, and temperature is already having an effect on some production aspects, quantity and quality, crucial to what brings distinctiveness to Oliu di Corsica (“OdC”) These feedbacks raise question as to how conceptions of terroir underpinning the uniqueness of OdC are evolving in the face of climate change.
In this commissioned research, we review the impacts of climate change on the terroir where OdC is produced and explore adaptation strategies to climate change to provide an incentive for producers to adapt their production and post-harvest systems to evolving agronomic conditions at the horizon of 2050. These adaptations raise critical issues including as to how the rules underpinning the distinctiveness of the AOP could evolve in the face of climate changes especially
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