ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to contribute to the reflections and debate around the role of the landscape and water heritage for community-based cultural tourism. To this end, we study the Central Algarve Coast, a fertile plain where communities have forged an agrarian landscape, characterised by the mastery of water for irrigating vegetable gardens and orchards. This historical irrigation system (norias, aqueducts, tanks, and canals) conveys the Arab-Muslim legacy and technological innovations of regional importance. Its historical and cultural interest and value, as well as its importance in terms of the collective identity and landscape memory, endow a heritage dimension (both material and immaterial) that requires safeguarding and valuing in the face of progressive abandonment and disuse. The main challenge of this pilot case study involves protecting and enhancing this valuable hydro-agricultural heritage through inventory and recovery coupled with its integration into cultural routes to provide visibility and prominence. Participatory-collaborative approaches were adopted to facilitate the role of cultural heritage and cultural participation in launching new tourism products that include the host community. The overall objectives feature this community becoming responsible for managing the water heritage routes, providing different experiences for visitors, who thereby gain a remarkable means of immersion in the local rural culture. Within the perspective of the importance of the community as the main actor in the planning and management of resources, we here recognise the key roles played by water heritage and active resident participation as the basis for developing sustainable tourism practices.
