Managing and Monitoring Sustainable Regional Development in Alpine Regions

Topics

• Governance capacity
• New forms of decision-making

Abstract

This paper is useful for QT2 since it provides a review of the literature about sustainable development and sustainable tourism in general, and in (Swiss) Alpine regions in particular. The paper deals to a great extent with sustainable tourism: the concept includes, besides economic and ecological dimensions, also others that appear to be relevant to us: • Sociocultural dimensions: sustainable touristic regions are characterized by a self-determined cultural dynamic and the integration of tourism into the local and regional culture (i.e., cultural identity and external relations columns); • Institutional dimensions: the development and realization of sustainable strategies integrates all actors (access to information and participation at decision-making process). This dimension seems to be related, in our terminology, to good governance. • Social dimension: not only small groups or non-regional companies benefit from tourism, but the region itself, i.e. everybody in the general population participates from the benefits. The authors also observe that in Switzerland (but not only in Switzerland) the scientific debate about sustainability has concentrated above all on the ecological dimension. In other words, sociocultural and other aspects are not analyzed at all or only marginally. This has started to change, albeit at a slow pace. The paper goes on by underlying the need for the development of indicators to monitor (and thus manage) sustainable regional development in Alpine regions, that is, indicators that take into consideration the different dimensions of sustainability.

Journal / Publisher / Institution

42th Congress of the European Regional Science Association

Reference to the original publication

pdf

Remarks

Remains at the general level and refers to a subsequent paper (Johnsen, Umbach-Daniel & Schnell, 2003) for the proposal of a specific set of indicators.

Further information

Managing and Monitoring Sustainable Regional Development in Alpine Regions