This Sicilian community has endured for centuries. Can it survive a changing climate?

Giorgia Caruso always imagined her children one day inheriting the farm her family has tended for three generations. Her daughters would do more than produce organic meat and dairy. They would continue a way of life central to Piana degli Albanesi, a community founded 500 years ago by Albanian refugees fleeing the Ottoman conquest. Perched on a fertile plateau in the mountains south of Palermo, the town has long provided much of the wheat and dairy central to Sicily’s agricultural traditions. Caruso hoped to see her children carry those traditions on. “I have two daughters I wished could take over our farming business one day, which is like our third child,” Caruso said with teary eyes as she tended the last of the family’s livestock. Now she’d like to see them build their lives somewhere safer. A flock of sheep graze in a vineyard near Piana degli Albanesi, Sicily, Italy, in October 2017. De Agostini Picture Library / Getty Images One day in late July three years ago, flames as high as a three-story building engulfed the family’s fields and threatened their home. Caruso and her husband Vito lost several acres of land and almost two dozen sheep, making it difficult to imagine their daughters taking over a business that may no longer exist in a few years. “Many times we’ve thought of resettling to a safer area, even abroad,” she said. “But it’s just so hard to pack up and leave our homeland.” Caruso’s family is not alone in facing that decision. A growing number of residents are questioning whether they can continue working the land that has sustained the Arbëreshë, as Italy’s Albanian ethnic minority is known, for five centuries. Piana is subject to a microclimate marked by extremes even for the Mediterranean basin, which is warming 20 percent faster than the global average. Summertime temperatures have averaged 85 degrees Fahrenheit over the past decade, with little to no rain. Sicily accounts for nearly half of Italy’s wildfires, and blazes struck in or around Piana in four of the last six years, displacing more than 100 people in 2021 and damaging several homes this past summer. Firefighting operations took place on the ground and from the air after a wildfire broke out in the town of Piana degli Albanesi, near the city of Palermo in Sicily, Italy, in August 2025. Alberto Lo Bianco / Anadolu via Getty Images​​ As farming — the town’s main source of income — grows more precarious, people are leaving. Piana has lost nearly 17 percent of its population since 2015. That is almost three times the rate of decline across Sicily as a whole, raising fears that climate change is accelerating the erosion of one of southern Europe’s oldest ethnic minority communities. “If our lands burn, there are no jobs for us, no more homes,” Giovanni Scalora said in Italian. He is a fourth-generation Arbëreshë farmer who owns land overlooking a lake — once Sicily’s largest reservoir — that almost dried up in 2024. “It’s a pity because if we disappear a part of Sicily’s and Albania’s and Europe’s cultural history disappears.” Arbëreshë elderly talk in front of a cafe before the Easter Sunday Holy Mass in April 2004 in Piana degli Albanesi, Sicily, Italy. Marco Di Lauro / Getty Images Piana degli Albanesi and much of Sicily’s interior have long been considered the island’s breadbasket. When the Arbëreshë settled there in the 15th century, they integrated through farm work. Beyond cultivating wheat and raising sheep and cattle, they specialized in making ricotta, a cheese used, among other things, as the filling in the globally-renowned Sicilian cannoli. “Legends say we invented it,” Scalora said of the pastry. Each May, the town hosts an international cannolo festival, and for many years those made in Piana have been deemed the best in all of Sicily. “But it’s hard to keep making it if there are no sheep left,” Scalora added. A strong relationship with the land has shaped the community’s identity for generations, a bond that was tested long before climate change. In 1947, armed bandits killed 11 farmers and injured 30 others during a May Day celebration near the mountain pass of Portella della Ginestra. The massacre became an enduring symbol of the sacrifices Sicilians made for the right to work the land, and it shaped the spiritual connection the Arbëreshë have with it. A photo from the 1950s shows a member of the Arbëreshë community with a donkey carrying hay. Mondadori via Getty Images That link, however, is growing increasingly tenuous. An unprecedented drought has decimated fields and livestock across Sicily over the past five years. This summer, entire towns were left without running water or electricity for days as Europe endured one of its worst heat waves in decades. In extreme conditions, particularly when hot, dry scirocco winds blow in from Africa, temperatures can top 100 degrees Fahrenheit. On August 11, 2021, they reached a European record of 119.8 F, and the island is increasingly at risk of desertification. “Extreme droughts as well as sudden, temporary extreme rainfall are severely damaging agricultural fields,” said Christian Mulder, an ecologist and professor at the University of Catania. “Climate [change] is aggravating the emptying of inner rural areas of the island and forcing emigration.” The European Environment Agency reports that the impacts of a warming world are increasingly concentrated among already vulnerable groups, including ethnic minorities like the Arbëreshë — a point Mulder emphasized. “Ancient populations, as well as ancient grains, are at risk of disappearing forever,” he said. Piana degli Albanesi sits amid mountains and farmland in Sicily’s tranquil rural interior, about 40 miles south of bustling Palermo. Flanked by two smaller Arbëreshë towns, it is the social and cultural hub of the entire community. Cobblestone alleys lead to the Church of San Giorgio Megalomartire, named for the town’s most revered saint. It is Piana’s North Star, a point of reference for locals and tourists alike. People have gathered there for centuries, most visibly during Easter Week, when residents past and present come together once again, and the town comes alive. An Arbëreshë priest celebrates the Easter Sunday Holy Mass in April 2004 in Piana degli Albanesi, Sicily, Italy. Marco Di Lauro / Getty Images When the celebrations end, the streets grow quiet once again. In Sheshi, Piana’s oldest neighborhood, colorful murals of Arbëreshë women in traditional attire offer a reminder of a vibrant culture that endures even as there are fewer people around to sustain it. Piana’s population has fallen from 6,293 residents in 2015 to 5,245 in 2024, with some of the steepest losses coming in recent years. (The true number is almost certainly lower, because many Sicilian expatriates do not change their residency status.) Although no data explicitly links the exodus to the changing conditions reshaping Sicily, residents say high unemployment and the resignation that has settled over the town are intertwined with the loss of farmland. Mulder believes what is unfolding there may represent the first case of climate migration leading to the potential loss of an entire ethnic minority in southern Europe. Sicilian emigration from rural areas, often prompted by crushing poverty and political strife, dates to the late 19th century. Many sailed for the United States, including a small number of Arbëreshë who, attracted by the similar climate, settled in California. For some leaving Piana today, California remains a key destination. Many of the people moving on are young, and their elders are coming to terms with the fact that they may be the last to work the land. “We adults don’t want to go away,” Caruso said. “But the new generation, the one of my daughters, I’m sure will not grow up here. I’ve told them, ‘America awaits you.’ I want a better life than this for them.” Farms dot the landscape near Piana degli Albanesi, Sicily, Italy, in September 2015. DeAgostini / Getty Images Those who choose to stay find hope in the possibility of adaptation. Scalora has seen members of his own family, mainly uncles and cousins, leave for the United States. But he is trying to find a way to remain, and has begun breeding cattle better suited to Sicily’s changing climate after failing to find a breed of sheep that can adapt as well. The tradeoff is that the ricotta Piana has made for centuries with sheep’s milk may one day have to be made with cow’s milk. “Our cheese will not be the same, but one can leave, or adapt to survive,” he said. Piana’s city council is trying to adapt, too. Rosario Petta, who has been mayor since 2022, has made slowing the exodus and preventing Piana from becoming a ghost town a goal of his administration. “One thousand people who leave is an extra 1,000 people who will no longer speak Arbëresh, which can put at risk language and identity preservation,” he said. Mayor Rosario Petta (on the right) sits in his office at one of the weekly city council’s meetings in Piana degli Albanesi. Courtesy of Rosario Petta To counter the population loss and wildfires, which often start on abandoned land, Petta has strengthened collaboration with the local committee of the Civil Protection unit and encouraged more residents to volunteer in wildfire prevention to protect their land. But the town is also looking beyond agriculture. “We are also trying to diversify our economic strategy by encouraging tourism,” Petta said. He is part of an international diaspora committee that is giving Piana opportunities to build ties with the United States, Albania and Kosovo, hoping their shared cultural connections will attract more visitors. Petta said Piana has seen an increase in tourists from the Balkans over the past three years, and he is now lobbying for direct flights between Palermo and Tirana. But tourism presents its own challenges. Across Sicily, its growth has offered an alternative to agriculture even as development takes over farmland and increasing numbers of visitors place additional pressure on already strained water and energy supplies. The San Nicola church or sanctuary, built by the Albanians in the 15th century, is the oldest church in Palazzo Adriano in western Sicily, Italy. elifranssens / Getty Images Not everyone believes adaptation is enough. Anna Liscari comes from a family of Arbëreshë tailors that has lived between California and Piana for the past 50 years. She permanently relocated to Newport Beach after developing what she called “a love-hate relationship” with Piana because it “seems to be stuck in time in the way it is managing its disappearance.” Liscari has seen how Piana’s environmental challenges can ripple through the local economy and traditions. Her great-aunt once owned one of the town’s most famous bars, known for selling some of its best cannoli. She eventually closed the business after the organic suppliers she relied on shut down because of constant livestock and land losses to droughts and wildfires. “We have survived wars, displacement, and poverty over the course of 500 years,” she said. “It’s crazy to think that climate and the inability to manage its effects is what might wipe us out,” Liscari said from her office in Newport Beach, where she works as a tourist agent for American tourists traveling to southern Italy. The lake of Piana this past spring, after unusually heavier rainfalls in early 2026 briefly reinvigorated it, sits between mountain plateaus in the Palermo countryside. Stefania D’Ignoti Whether that fate can be avoided depends on decisions made beyond Piana. Salvatore Cona, who leads Sicily’s Civil Protection Unit, said the Italian government must lead the response needed to develop an adaptation strategy that can prevent further population loss. Towns like Piana, he said, simply do not have the resources available at the national level and are, in practice, being left to find their own solutions. Officials in Rome, however, maintain that the national government is providing resilience funding and that regional governments are responsible for tailoring the response to local needs. Sicilian officials say they lack the resources to meet the crisis. Mulder argues that the island’s climate crisis has been aggravated by poor governance at both the regional and national level, worsening its effects. In 2023, wildfires scorched 142,150 acres across Sicily, while extreme heat caused more than 200 million euros in damage to agriculture and infrastructure. The following year, after prolonged drought depleted reservoirs and groundwater supplies, Rome declared a national state of emergency and initially allocated 20 million euros to mitigate water shortages. More national funding followed while Sicily committed 100 million euros to help farmers combat and prevent drought damage. But adaptation is not simply a matter of resources. Like the Arbëreshë, many of Europe’s linguistic minorities live in rural regions particularly vulnerable to climate change. The European Environment Agency says vulnerable groups, including ethnic minorities, must be considered in adaptation planning to ensure their specific risks and needs are addressed. Petta said that has not happened for his community, which he believes receives far less attention than other ethnolinguistic minorities in Italy. Anthony Plescia remembers his elders speaking with great reverence about their ancestral home of Piana degli Albanesi, which they referred to fondly by its Arbëreshë name “Hora” even though most of them knew it only from stories told by their parents and grandparents. Plescia, the president of the Arbëreshë of Sacramento association and a descendant of immigrants who left Piana more than 100 years ago to settle in that California city, grew up surrounded by such stories. “I also remember the large Arbëreshë picnics in McKinley Park and the strong sense of cultural pride that pervaded the events,” he said, referring to the park that has long been a gathering place for the Arbëreshë of Sacramento. “The picnics continue to this day, though many of the old family members are now gone.” Anthony Plescia (on the right) poses next to a painting of a Sicilian chariot, one of the island’s most famous cultural symbols, at a gathering of the Arbereshe of Sacramento. community Courtesy of Anthony Plescia Several Arbëreshë families arrived in California as early as 1910. Many chose Southern California for its plentiful agricultural jobs and nascent wine industry; some even established wineries in Etiwanda and Rancho Cucamonga, continuing their heritage of tending the land. Others favored Northern California and the Central Valley, including Sacramento, because its climate and fertile land mirrored that of Sicily. Some of Plescia’s relatives worked in tomato canneries, while his great-grandfather eked out a living gathering corn husks and selling them to local tamale makers. Language and culture can fade after families leave Piana, a loss that compounds across generations. Plescia was an adult before he learned of his Arbëreshë heritage; he grew up knowing only that his parents were from Sicily. Losing touch with one’s past is, he says, often the price of safety and stability. Still, he’s found that, nostalgia aside, he hasn’t met anyone who regrets coming to America, as it invariably improved their lives. Even though California also regularly endures devastating wildfires, Plescia believes it isn’t experiencing the same pressures he sees in Piana. He also believes the state and federal governments are taking the threat more seriously. In October, Plescia traveled to Piana, where he met Petta. They agreed to explore creating a confederation of the Arbëresh organizations in the U.S. to establish a formal relationship with the town and strengthen cultural ties and exchanges between the communities. As more young Arbëreshë leave Sicily, those ties could help preserve a culture that has survived so much over the past 500 years, even if fewer and fewer people remain in the town where it first took root.