Project Sites

Both case study sites are located in drought-prone regions of the Alps: The central Valais is a continental inner alpine mountain area of Switzerland; the Haute-Romanche basin, located on the western side of the Lautaret Pass in the central French Alps, has a continental inner alpine climate with Mediterranean influence.

While both sites provide a high diversity of ecosystem services, they are highly vulnerable to expected climate impacts. Additionally, changes in the socio-economic context, particularly agricultural policies, have strongly influenced land cover and land use changes since 1900 with a decrease in agricultural land (especially pastures) and an increase in forested areas in the Swiss Alps, as well as a decrease in mowing vs. grazing since the 1950s in the French Alps. The abandonment (particularly in Switzerland) or change in management (particularly in France) of marginal agricultural land has caused a loss of cultural landscapes and related ecosystem services. In both sites, traditional farming systems can currently only be retained by considerable subsidies and most farming households rely on tourism for complementary income. In Switzerland, however, farm abandonment and out-migration is on-going, while the small number of remaining farms is maintained in the French case study.

In terms of their area and population, the sites differ also considerably: The Valais site expands from the Rhône with the city of Visp to highest peaks above 4000m and encompasses around 15,000 inhabitants with a recent increase in residents in the valley bottom due to better accessibility of the Valais through the Lötschberg basis tunnel (2007). The French site covers only a tenth of the area of the Swiss site in a basin ranging from ca. 1300 m to nearly 4000 m a.s.l., with a total population of ca. 800 residents. The expansion of settlement is limited by stringent land planning at both sites. Since the closure of the main access road due to a land slide in April 2015, the accessibility of the French site has been considerably reduced, creating a tipping point for local economic development.

In terms of their political context, the Swiss national state and the cantons play only a modest role in planning mountain development, except in the agricultural sector, in which the recent agricultural policy supports mountain farmers for the management of extensive grassland and for grassland-based milk and meat production as well as animal husbandry on summer pastures and for fostering landscape quality. In contrast, the central French State intervenes more widely in all sectors. However, differentiation between the two institutional systems has been decreasing recently: France, which was originally very centralized, is showing a gradual shift towards the decentralization of development powers. The Swiss system, which was highly decentralized, is conversely moving towards greater power for national bodies. Interestingly communal management of grasslands is an important feature at both sites.