Abstract
Mountainous areas are expected to face increasing societal pressure due to mass tourism and the rising intensity and frequency of natural hazards triggered by climate change. Therefore, the development of proper strategies for the management of environmental risks will be crucial to ensure their liveability. Against this backdrop, concepts such as territorial resilience and Social–Ecological Systems (SES) can support the prioritisation of protective efforts. This paper presents a conceptual framework to be applied to areas subject to natural hazards. Its aim is to support the integration of different measures, with a special focus on protection forests and other Nature-based Solutions, into current risk management strategies. The framework considers (i) the definition of SES boundaries; (ii) the identification of the main goals to be achieved; (iii) the quantification of the supply and demand of the ecosystem protection service; and (iv) the development of risk management strategies able to include the management of protection forests among the adopted solutions. This framework is intended as a tool to be adopted by local and regional decision-makers as a tool to identify the areas at risk, to recognise the potential role of protection forests, and to operationalise the concept of resilience through the deployment of “grey-green” strategies.
Highlights
The Alps are one of the most densely populated mountainous areas of the world, inhabited by more than 14 M people within a complex environment covered by more than 8.7 M hectares of forests [1]
Mountainous areas are expected to face increasing societal pressure due to mass tourism and the rising intensity and frequency of natural hazards triggered by climate change
In the light of increasing societal pressure on mountainous areas and the rising intensity and frequency of natural hazards triggered by climate change, a shift in the current protection paradigm is needed
Summary
The Alps are one of the most densely populated mountainous areas of the world, inhabited by more than 14 M people within a complex environment covered by more than 8.7 M hectares of forests [1] Various factors such as mass tourism, limitations to settlement areas, the need to maintain or improve the current protective measures and infrastructure, and land use conflicts constitute severe challenges for the development of these hazard-prone zones [2]. The management of these issues will influence the liveability of these areas to a great extent, entailing a significant financial outlay for local communities and perhaps even jeopardising their social and economic interactions [2]. An increasing awareness of the self-recovery and adaptive capacities of these territories is emerging and the role of optimising natural ecosystem services (ES) to provide this function is becoming crucial [8,9]
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