Together with the project partners, ALPARC coordinated the development of a short video clip to disseminate the message of the project GaYA (Governance and Youth in the Alps) to regional and local decision-makers and local administrations.

A creative storyboard with pictures is drawn on a whiteboard and available in five languages. The main message: it is up to the decision makers (local communities, administration and protected areas) to involve young people in their localities? For this reason GaYA is there to help and provide them with appropriate tools.

The challenge behind GaYA project is the low implication that young people have regarding political life and the decisions made in their Alpine localities. Besides providing tools and methods that can help foster youth participation on local level in the Alpine space, the project wants to promote youth participation and communicate good practices in this regard.

For further information visit: http://www.alpine-space.eu/projects/gaya/en/home

GaYA (Governance and Youth in the Alps) runs from November 2016 to February 2019 and is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the Interreg Alpine Space programme (Total budget: 1,092,748 € - 928,836€ ERDF grant). ALPARC is work package leader in the pilot stage (End 2017-2018).

The Sondrio Film Festival, the International exhibition on protected areas documentary take place from the 13th to the 26th of  November 2017 in Sondrio.
The event aims at raising awareness on nature conservation and protection, valorising environmental education activities and promoting nature documentaries.

After a first workshop in Vorarlberg last March, ALPARC has recently organised two further workshops in Les Ecrins National Park (France) and in the nature parks of the Ossola Valleys (Italy) in the frame of the WeWild project. The aim of the project and its growing working group is the development of a joint communication initiative to reduce wildlife disturbance in the Alps in winter. The numerous participants learned about the project’s progress, gave feedback and were involved in the further development of this joint initiative. 

In the French Alps several ongoing projects aim at tackling human-nature conflicts in outdoor sports. The workshop in Le Bourg d’Oisans, (Les Ecrins National Park, 21st September 2017), specifically dedicated to recreational impacts in winter, helped to extend the working group in the French Alps. 29 practitioners from almost all concerned French natural parks in the Alps and from smaller protected areas (e.g. NATURA 2000 managers) were present. Thanks to the workshop the initiative is being embedded in the regional context of joint projects, in which many stakeholders are involved: the Biodiv’sports “Awareness Raising via Participation and Mapping” project (lead partner LPO Isère) and the film series project of the Regional nature parks of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

During the second international WeWild workshop in the Italian Alps (Ossola Valley nature parks, 19th and 20th October 2017), 17 participants had a closer look at the regional context of winter wildlife disturbance. The challenges facing protected areas and stakeholders in the Italian Alps, linked to a growing impact of outdoor sports in winter, are huge, but only a few pilot initiatives exist to date. A country-specific concern that still worsens the situation in winter is the lack of legislation regarding heli-skiing and snowmobiles. The joint initiative of WeWild and its tools could trigger further local actions in areas where stakeholders see the need to act or are already acting (e.g. South Tyrol, Aree protette dell’Ossola).

Both workshops helped to work further on the initiative’s strategy and its charter, and on the joint communication tools (graphical identity, video, and website). By the end of the year, the ALPARC operational unit will finalise these outputs and come up with a communication plan.

The WeWild project is financed by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN, Germany) with funds of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB, Germany).

The 6th edition of the International Symposium for Research in Protected Areas will take place in Salzburg, Austria on 2nd – 3rd November 2017. Registrations are open now!

Protected areas are the backbone of the Alpine Region and play an important role regarding the regional development of the territory. More than 100 key stakeholders from more than 20 countries will discuss protection aims, protected area management as well as respective impacts on society and regional economy in times of transition and change. 

Following the idea of transdisciplinary research, academics and representatives from governments, business, NGOs and the general public will come together in order to discuss relevant topics and concepts regarding the future development of protected areas from the Alps to the Danube Delta. Hence, Specific thematic issues are related to biodiversity protection, water and resource management, sustainable agriculture and the role of long-term monitoring in protected areas. 

The symposium is an excellent opportunity for sharing views and findings as well as fostering the dialogue between scientific expertise and practical insights in the field of protected areas on an international scale in the Alps and the Danube. 

Find out more about the program at the website of the conference. Registrations are open until October, 4th.

The 6th International Symposium for Research in Protected Areas is organized by

« Winter sports and wildlife in the Alps »

We are organizing the second WeWild workshop in the Ossola valleys (Piedmont, Italy) on the 19th and 20th of October 2017.

Please find enclosed the agenda.

For more information : info@alparc.org

The Alpine Day of Tourism and Mobility is a two-day conference focusing on innovative and sustainable mobility in touristic regions.

The conference will take place on 18th-19th October 2017 in Werfenweng, Austria.

The participants will have the chance to experience soft mobility solutions in Werfenweng and to attend panel discussions concerning the future of touristic mobility as well as concrete projects implemented in six Alpine countries.

To register to the event, fill in the form available below and send it to tourismusmobilitaet[@]bmwfw.gv.at by 4th October 2017.

For further information, please find the announcement attached.

The Alpine Day of Tourism and Mobility is organized by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management.

The video clip reflecting the atmosphere of the 3rd edition of Youth at Top has just been released !
Are you curious? Please have a look and discover the experiences lived by our young participants and their guides.

The third edition of “Youth at the Top” took place on July 11th and July 12th in six Alpine countries and three countries of the Carpathians.This time, the international youth event hosted 48 events which involved numerous different day and night activities.
Hence, more than 500 enthusiastic young people from Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Switzerland, Poland, Romania and Slovakia set out on a great adventure to discover the treasures of the mountain environment.

For more information about the 2017 edition, please consult the Youth at the Top website.

We are looking forward to seeing you on the 12th of July 2018 !

This international initiative is coordinated by ALPARC and supported by the German Ministry for the Environment and the Principality of Monaco.

CIPRA Annual Conference 2017 will take place in Innsbruck on 29th-30th September.

The conference main topic will be spatial planning in the Alps. Several challenges are putting a relevant pressure on the future development of the Alps underlining the need to discuss the future perspectives of the spatial planning of the whole Alpine region. Different aspects will be addressed such as demographic change, management of scarce resources, increasing demand of mobility, consumption, energy and recreational activities and different actors and stakeholders will take part in the discussions.

For more information, programme and registration, please consult CIPRA website.

The Young Academics Award is an initiative led by the Alpine Convention in collaboration with ISCAR that seeks every year to reward the best master theses of students from different universities from across the Alps, who deal with relevant Alpine topics.

The 4th edition of the Award is entitled “Sustainable water management in the Alps”. The particular problems the contest will be focusing on are: conflicting water uses among different sectors, abundance and scarcity of water and efficient water use.

The deadline for applications is May 31st 2018.

For durther details about the Award, consult our news or visit the website of the Alpine Convention here.

Mountainous areas are known to be centers of biodiversity and biodiversity conservation. In Europe this is true for the Alps which extend to 8 countries. Together with the impacts of climate change, the ever rising quest for development by population and economy leads to the urgent need of taking action on a transnational level. Hence, articles in this publication ask for the specific challenges and possible solutions regarding the protection of this special habitat. 

ALPARC has contributed with two articles to this magazine. The article “Protected areas in the Alpine Arc and their gaps” illustrates the current situation of protected areas in the Alps, their geographical distribution and the type of protection they provide. Although an important part of the alpine territory is covered by some type of protected area, shortcomings with regard to certain habitats (forests, near-nature rivers, lower altitudinal levels) can be observed. A lack of standardized terminology and harmonized objectives is also an obstacle to cross-border comparison. These and further aspects are critically analyzed and discussed by recognized alpine experts.

The article “The contribution of ecological connectivity to a Green Economy in the Alps” presents potential socio-economic dimensions of activities aiming to improve ecological connectivity in alpine areas. Pilot Regions for Ecological Connectivity of the Alpine Convention implement measures to conserve and restore ecological connectivity at a local level. These activities not only have positive ecological effects but also contribute to a certain extent to the economic development of the regions. By highlighting functional chains, a selection of good practice examples illustrates the contribution of these actions to a Green Economy in the Alpine area and showcases the potential for planning and implementing ecological connectivity measures for the development of new and innovative regional offers.

In June 2017 a core group of hikers departed from Vienna and have been travelling through several destinations all over the Alps on a journey of 120 days that will lead them to Nice at the end of September.

Whatsalp is the continuation of TransALPedes, a journalistic-political project launched in 1992. Back then, a core group of eight specialists and media workers, accompanied by a group of interested parties, crossed the Alpine region in four months. Thanks to more than 100 encounters TransALPedes built up an international network of 800 people with committed individuals, groups and authorities engaged in the protection and long-term development of the Alpine region.

In 2017, all along the hike the core group has already had the opportunity to set up numerous site meetings with interested individuals, groups and institutions, shedding light on and discussing the changes in the landscapes and societies across the Alps that have taken place over time. The group has also been in touch and had some exchanges with the youngsters of the “Whatsalp Youth” project led by CIPRA. As the Whatsalp hike has largely followed the route that the TransALPedes Group walked 25 years ago, all the meetings have been a great opportunity to make relevant comparisons and reflect over the traces left by humans and natural events in the past as well as to draw attention to future perspectives.

Whatsalp hike has been reported through short texts, films and photos on a blog where the group has been communicating on a daily basis about what they have seen, heard and experienced.
For further information about the roadmap of previous and future meetings, the route of the hike or to register for the last stages and join the core group, please visit the website of the project.

Give Youth a Voice in the Alps! GaYA Encourages Youth Participation in Local - Urban and Rural - Politics

How can young people become more involved in local political processes? How can local politicians, their municipalities and the young themselves benefit from increased inclusion? These questions are central to the EU Interreg Alpine Space GaYA project (Governance and Youth in the Alps), and especially to its pilot stage that started at the beginning of September. As project partner and coordinator of the pilot phase in 2018, ALPARC also works closely with three Nature park regions in France.

The first stage of the project ended with the “Youth Participation in Political Decisions in Alpine Regions” workshop on 29 June in Bozen/Bolzano. The aim of this first stage was to analyse democratic and participatory processes across the Alps with particular focus on youth, and to highlight good practices. At the workshop, the partners presented these results to numerous representatives from municipalities and the political sphere from all over the Alpine space (report available, see below). The GaYA project teaser video-clip, which was designed by the ALPARC coordination unit with an external video maker, encourages youth participation in local politics by highlighting some of the existing examples (see below).

Over the next months, the pilot stage will start in the different GaYA pilot areas. Based on local needs and challenges, the aim is to test innovative approaches to mobilise and include youth in political processes in various fields: from youth-related topics such as education and culture to wider regional challenges such as biodiversity and climate change. Accompanied by the GaYA partnership and supported by external experts in the fields of citizen participation and democratic innovation, each pilot area will develop a participatory action plan and should implement at least one specific action in 2018. The experiences and lessons from this experimental approach will help the consortium to develop a toolkit and recommendations for policy-making in the field of youth participation in local politics.

GaYA runs from November 2016 to February 2019 and is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the Interreg Alpine Space programme (Total budget: 1,092,748 € - 928,836€ ERDF grant). ALPARC is work package leader in the pilot stage (End 2017-2018).

For further information
Have a look at the GaYA comparative report (all Alpine languages): EN DE FR IT SI
Watch the GaYA teaser video-clip available in (all Alpine languages): EN DE FR IT SI
To keep yourself updated, please visit: www.alpine-space.eu/projects/gaya