The paper deals with the determination of marginal rural areas posed by the EU reg. 2081/93 for the objective 5b: Development of rural areas. The sustainable development of rural areas has to be addressed in all its aspects: economical, ecological and social. In many Italian counties crises in the agricultural sector are not always caused by internal factors, and the difficulties of many innovative farms are often determined by non-market reasons. Social marginality of the areas, low level in farm services etc. play an important role in explaining these agricultural problems in many areas.
We propose a methodology to evaluate the relative level of welfare in the commons of Tuscany according to Sen's theory of well being. In the first part of the paper we analyze the theoretical framework and the definition of the functionings used in the welfare evaluation. Then, the methodological tools for the evaluation of potential functionings are illustrated.
We finally propose a multiattribute methodology, based on fuzzy logic, defining a partial ranking of Tuscan commons. The results obtained are compared with present objective 5b areas for Tuscany and the most important consequences for regional agricultural policy are discussed.