CIPRA Sounding Board

Remaining innovative, thinking anew

CIPRA is working towards the future. Our efforts revolve around a life in the Alps that is both appealing and worthwhile for ours and future generations. But we can only achieve this aim if we work in a competent, focused and visionary manner. The Sounding Board will support CIPRA International in the ongoing process of strengthening its role as an inspiration for sustainable development in the Alpine regions, clarifying its positioning and building networks.

How?

CIPRA International regularly works with people from various disciplines and areas of work. Such co-operation will be intensified in the context of the Sounding Board. Representatives from CIPRA International and outside will meet once a year to evaluate CIPRA’s strategies, activities and themes. The Sounding Board will permit us to open up to outside knowledge and opinions, allowing us to identify weaknesses, strengths and synergies and to take appropriate actions.

Who?

The Sounding Board consists of between 8 and 15 members from various disciplines and areas of work. Attendance is at the invitation of the board of CIPRA International in agreement with the national CIPRA representations. Members are appointed for two years. Members of the Sounding Board will be independent and have no function within CIPRA itself: their participation in the Sounding Board is voluntary and of a purely advisory nature.

Members of the CIPRA Sounding Board

Jens Badura is a cultural philosopher and culture manager who runs the berg_kulturbüro in Ramsau near Berchtesgaden (www.bergkulturbuero.org) and heads the creativealps_lab at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). He initiates and leads projects in the controversial field of the creation of cultural value and sustainable development in the Alpine space.

Bernard Debarbieux is a Professor of Political and Cultural Geography and of Urban and Regional Spatial Planning. He concentrates on the production of geographical knowledge, spatial planning and environmental policies. His research is focused on mountainous areas, which he has studied at the regional, national and global levels.

Andreas Muhar from the Institute of Landscape Development, Recreation and Conservation Planning at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria, focuses in his work on the challenges and prospects of sustainable development of the landscape. He also addresses the question of how we can organise sustainability processes.

Irmi Seidl is Director of the Economic and Social Sciences Research Unit of the Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) where she teaches ecological economics. In addition to topics in the field of transdisciplinary environmental research, Irmi Seidl also develops visions and concepts for a society that is not dependent upon economic growth.

Martin Strele is executive director of kairos (www.kairos.or.at), a non-profit research agency with offices in Bregenz, Austria, whose mission is to develop prototypes that will advance the world in ecologically and socially just ways. The agency works together with a wide variety of partners from the public and private sectors.

Kirsten Koop is an associate professor of human geography and regional planning at Université Grenoble Alpes. She works on development and transition theories, social innovations and territorial transition and is engaged in transdisciplinary research. She is currently the director of the cluster of excellence “Innovations and Territorial Transitions in Mountain regions” - ITTEM.

Olivia Bina is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences-University of Lisbon and Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. Her work contributes to the interdisciplinary exploration of pathways that balance ever-smarter growth and technology with a recovery of the unlimited potential of human-nature connectedness, reflecting her varied background combining political science, ecological economics, human geography, futures studies and landscape architecture.