Sustainable Mobility and Tourism in Sensitive Areas of the Alps and the Carpathians
The Alpine and the Carpathian Conventions state sustainable tourism mobility as a challenge and call for cooperation on this topic among the countries of these mountain regions. In particular sustainable tourist mobility is not well-developed in mountainous regions, especially in South-East Europe, as mountain regions are lacking sufficient sustainable transport facilities and facing major ecological impacts caused by individual vehicles . Based on this fact, EU-, national strategies and INTERREG-outcomes a project was jointly developed under the leadership of the Environment Agency Austria. The proposed project aims at achieving 'Durable environmentally friendly tourism accessibility and connection to, between and in sensitive regions of the Alps and Carpathians, benefiting all (potential) users' through visualisation of existing problems, awareness raising, development of common knowledge and creation of a monitoring base. With the long-term perspective of increasing sustainable tourist mobility, railway and multimodal connections will be improved and attractive offers created via pre-investment measures, pilot activities and investments. A policy dialogue on the sub-regional and EU-level, feedback loops with the (Interim) Secretariats of the Alpine and Carpathian Convention and the related working groups dealing with transport as well as the development of the Transport Protocol to the Carpathian Convention will ensure political and institutional sustainability of the project and broader dissemination in these two important European mountain ranges.12 partner from 8 countries, accompanied by further 4 ASP (strategic level) and 6 Observers (incl. Slovenia and Montenegro) build the partnership - thus a multi-level participation and broad coverage in both macro-regions and transfer of know-how is ensured.