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

This story doesn't concern home energy upgrades, so it falls outside what Retrofit Relay covers. But here's what it reports, in plain terms.

Piana degli Albanesi, a farming town in the mountains of Sicily founded 500 years ago by Albanian refugees, is emptying out as drought and wildfire make farming there harder to sustain. The town has lost nearly 17 percent of its population since 2015, almost three times the rate of decline across Sicily overall. Wildfires have hit the area in four of the last six years, and summer temperatures have averaged 85 degrees Fahrenheit over the past decade with little rain. Families who raised sheep for generations, making the ricotta used in Sicily's famous cannoli, are losing land and livestock to fire and drought and watching their children leave for places like California.

Local leaders are trying to adapt: one farmer is switching from sheep to cattle better suited to the hotter, drier climate, and the mayor is pushing tourism and cultural ties with Albanian and Kosovar communities abroad to slow the population loss. Sicily's regional government has committed money to help farmers cope with drought, and Italy's national government declared an emergency after reservoirs and groundwater ran low, but local officials say the funding isn't enough. Researchers who study the region say what's happening in Piana may be one of the first cases in southern Europe where climate pressures threaten to wipe out an entire ethnic minority community.