Governing mountain commons between tradition and innovation

The high spatial, climatic and cultural diversity of the Alpine region has led to particular forms of traditional governance of commons with respective commoners’ organizations and rules. However, the traditional use of the commons has increasingly become subject to changes due to challenges of modern economies and different social compositions and practices. Accordingly, changing demands as well as new social and technological innovations are shaping the use of commons and their governance practices today. In this policy brief, UNESCO Chairs of the Alpine region present traditional models of governance of commons (water, pasture, forest, biodiversity, and protected areas) in the Alpine space. We discuss the relevance of traditional governance practices and their limitations in the light of current challenges linked to sustainability. We do this by using examples of different UNESCO sites (biosphere reserves, world heritage sites, geoparks) and surrounding regions, and we ask ourselves where social and technological innovations can contribute to social decisions on how to deal with the commons. According to the discussed examples and project results, we derive recommendations for policy makers. In this way, we would like to contribute to an international discussion on the management of common resources in general and of mountain protected areas in particular

Assessment of forest wilderness in Kalkalpen National Park. eco.mont (Journal on Protected Mountain Areas Research)|eco.mont Vol. 7 No. 2 7 2|

In order to illustrate the state and development of forest wilderness in Kalkalpen National Park and thus also the effectiveness of national parks, we analysed various inventory data to assess the four different aspects of wilderness: naturalness, undisturbedness, undevelopedness and scale. Naturalness is proven by an analysis of hemeroby. The average hemeroby value of the park’s forest is 7.2 on a scale form 1 (artificial) to 9 (natural). High density of the white-backed woodpecker population (up to 2.9 territories per 100 ha) and the occurrence of endangered relic beetles confirm high naturalness. Undisturbedness is proven by an increase in hemeroby development (+0.19) and by the forest age from a historical viewpoint (> 50% of the forest area is older than 160 years). An evaluation of forest road density measures the quality of undevelopedness. The park’s 16 800 ha of forest constitute an area large and sufficient enough for ensuring functioning natural processes. Adding all these factors together, a rather high state of forest wilderness can be ascertained, which confirms the effectiveness of the national park management