ERA - Eco Regio Alpe Adria

Best Practice

Topics

• Policies and instruments
• Regional value added, Governance capacity, Protected areas

Short description

* Project updated on 25 April 2007 according to information from the project contact persons * The three regions of the parks Nationalpark Nockberge – Austria, Parco naturale regionale delle Prealpi Giulie – Italy, Triglavski Narodni Park – Slovenia have established a cross-border cooperation regarding a common and sustainable interregional development. The current Interreg III A project – „ERA – Eco Regio Alpe Adria“ gives the possibility to work in different interregional working groups, meetings and conferences to develop a common marketing.

---

Project executive

Nationalpark Nockberge – Austria, Dietmar Rossmann Parco naturale regionale delle Prealpi Giulie – Italy, Stefano Santi, Triglavski Narodni Park – Slovenia, Davorin Koren

---

Participants

Local participants of the three regions such as farmers, owners of restaurants, regional producers, schools and teachers, representatives of museums and so on. Furthermore powerful partners in the regions, regional tourist associations, regional community of interests and the regional managements. Administrations of the three parks– Nationalpark Nockberge, Parco naturale regionale delle Prealpi Giulie, Triglavski Narodni Park and the private consulting office “Umweltbüro Klagenfurt”. Basically, the structures of co-operation between partners were thematic roundtables organize many times during the year. All the participants come into contact with in an annual ERA-congress meeting.

Objectives

The aim is a sustainable economic development on regional level for all participating parks. Thereby the achievement of an improved, well functioning cooperation and a joint marketing for the three regions becomes important. A cross border tourist offer for the three countries “Giro dei Parchi”, with main focus on knowledge transfer about nature, regional products and natural tourism co-operations is to be worked out together with local participants. The “Giro dei Parchi” shall give the tourists better understanding for the traditional culture of the three regions by topics as nature experience, village culture, agriculture and handcraft. To overcome the language barrier of the participants and to increase the motivation for a cross-bordered cooperation events and excursions are commonly organized. The project has also a very important cultural goal as it reduces barriers and motivates for a joint economical and cultural development in fields like agriculture, tourism, education, etc.

Activities

The first trilingual ERA congress took place in October 2004 in the Nationalpark Nockberge– since then, the project partners have been organizing several interregional meetings within their steering group as well as for the three target groups tourism, environmental education and regional products. The steering group of the ERA-project meets every second month to plan and to decide further steps. ERA activities take place on two levels: a regional and an interregional level. On the regional level are different workshops and meetings held. The main interregional activities are exchanges, excursions, meetings and conferences, such as pupil exchanges, culinary evenings in the regions with focus on the partner regions, excursions of the target groups to partner regions, exchanges of employees of the national parks, ERA conferences in Bled (SLO) 2005 and in Resia (IT) 2006. Interregional meetings of the working groups will define the way to collaborate as well as coming future projects.

Process

The ERA-Eco Regio Alpe Adria is part of the major Interreg III A project. The steering group of the ERA projects meets every second month to plan and to decide further steps. Within the ERA project participants are working in workshops and are taking their decisions in a corporative way.

Results

In October 2004 the first cross-border ERA-congress in Austria took place. Results are three interregional working groups within the topics: tourism, regional product processing and knowledge transfer about nature. So far they started to collect information, have organized different meetings and are soon publishing their first interregional multilingual brochures. A network of museums (transactional collaboration of museums, touring exhibitions), a gastronomic network (typical regional dishes will be offered in selected restaurants of the region, national park weeks), a joint product marketing (one or two characteristic products per region shall be developed and brought to market) is in progress. A trilingual event calendar with regional activities, celebrations and events from all three regions has been designed. Trilingual project days in schools with children from all three regions have already been hold. They are also planed for the future and will be extended in all three regions.

Evaluation

The success factors for implementation refers to the fact that participants were interested in the development of a common market. The possibility to build a network among economic actors (farmers, owners of restaurants, regional producers) in border areas of Austria, Slovenia and Italy, so the financial gain potentialities should be considered as the most important attractive factor for the project success. Representatives of museums are positively involved because they could reach a high number of visitors, while schools and teachers viewed the project as a possibility to reinforce identity consciousness.

Difficulties

There’re few adjustment during the implementation phase. The most relevant ones concern the creation of new thematic work groups (e.g. devote to museums or restoration themes). Problems appeared during the implementation phase were related to linguistic communication among partners that speak different languages, difficulties to involve some local stakeholders (like e.g. tourism consortiums) and faulty knowledge about legislative framework in the three countries of the project.

Budget

60.400,00 (Euro)

Financial backer

Interreg III A project

Source of information

other contact

Mr Stefano Santi
Ente Parco Naturale Prealpi Giulie
loc. Prato, Resia, Italy
info@parcoprealpigiulie.org
+39 0433 53534
+39 0433 53129

Competition

Participant at the 2005 Future in the Alps competition

Homepage

http://

Comments

Impact on nature and environment

As the ERA-project is done by three park-regions an improvement of natural awareness is one of the primary goals. Further they increase the awareness of local population that protected areas today are more and more seen as a possibility to develop additional income for the local population without having a negative impact to the environment. Because of the increased name recognition of the regions more financial resources are flowing à the conservation of the protected areas is guaranteed.

Economic value added

The international working groups prepare a common marketing for different fields (tourism, regional products, …). As the region will be merchandised also internationally and a cross-border “Giro dei Parchi” will be introduced. In this way incomes for the local population will arise and hopefully new jobs will be created. Different regional products can be sold for a higher price and local people are motivated to work on in agriculture or handcraft also for the future.

Socio-cultural value added

The awareness of local population regarding regional characteristics of their regions, the habitat quality and attractiveness of these areas characterised by highland agriculture are increasing. People are working in international working groups and are developing common future marketing strategies. This international collaboration gives a lot of cultural, social and linguistic possibilities for everyone. The workshop structure and basis work are giving a very bride platform for gender issues.

Innovative content

It is a trilingual cross-border cooperation of three park regions with different conditions, that is working on a common international marketing strategy. Participative approach - the regional population can contribute themselve to the strengths of their regions – decisions are made in a transparent way. A common cross-border tourist offer of all three park regions for different target groups is a very big opportunity for all local actors. All offers will be given at least in three languages.

Good governance

Within the ERA-project participants are working in workshops and are taking their decisions in a corporative way. So participants from all three regions are deciding how to develop their products, services and offers in a very transparent way. The project progress is presented at the annually trilingual conference of the three parks. So local actors also decide who has to do what in which time. The Umweltbüro is helping to coordinate and plan the different organisational steps.

PR impact

Annually trilingual ERA conference and different local informative events. Sending leaflets and brochures to all of the participating and interesting parties. Circulation of the brochures in the information centres of the park administrations. Publications in the park journals as well as in regional media.

Multiplier effect / networking

To motivate local people to work on the ERA-project excursions to “best practises” and good functioning examples of the three regions regarding the topics of tourism, regional products and environmental education are organized. There are different cross-border arrangements, events, excursions and joint event calendars that point out that local participants can learn from the interregional work, can exchange experiences and make new friend- and partnerships.

Transferability

International and trilingual working experiences of cooperation (joint information work; linking homepages; networking; creating a cross-border communication flow, moderate multilingual workshops) as the specific results (project days for schools, restaurant guides, event calendars, Best-Practises examples) can be transferred to other regions. The partner- friendship of parks is a method to work out things together and to search for common solutions of problems concerning all protected areas.

Further information