Neoendogenous Rural Development in Mountain Areas

Abstract

In recent years, development in mountain regions has been increasingly subject to the pressures of climate change and shifts in natural resource use. At the same time, appreciation of the manifold assets and services provided by these regions to wider communities has increased significantly due to enhanced recognition of place-specific opportunities. Public goods provided through adapted land management systems and regional resource use have helped shape rural amenities and overcome previously limited perspectives aimed at mitigating the danger of marginalization, focusing instead on ways of nurturing the development potential of mountain areas. In this chapter we focus on emerging practices in local development initiatives in these areas, which tend to take both the challenges and opportunities arising from local contexts into account. However, successful action does not rely exclusively on endogenous potential. It must also take into account mountain–lowland inter-relations and inter-regional flows, which must be integrated into development strategies. To foster such approaches, mountain strategies must review the institutional requirements and governance frameworks, and their influence on human–nature relationships in these adverse geographic situations. This perspective reflects, in particular, the substantial services that mountain areas provide to other areas and the increasing importance of the flows between different spatial categories. A “neo-endogenous rural development” approach enables local actors in mountain regions to shift concern about their current status as a dependency culture to exploiting place-specific development opportunities.