SWOMM 2010 – Transport and Environment in Mountain Areas

SWOMM 2010 – Transport & Environment in Mountain Areas:

Traffic Patterns, Ecosystems Services, Policies for Sustainable Development

The SWOMM 2010 workshop was held on 14 December at FAO in Rome.

The Scientific Workshop on Mountain Mobility and Transport (SWOMM) is an initiative promoted by the Italian Ministry for the Environment since 2005. This year the Mountain Partnership Secretariat worked in cooperation with the SWOMM Scientific Secretariat for the organization of the day, within the framework of the AlpCheck 2 Project of the Alpine Space ETC Programme.

As from the title, SWOMM 2010 aimed at striking the balance between two crucial needs for the development of mountain areas: transportation development on one hand, environment preservation on the other. The panel of discussants, who represented several organizations, ranging from Ministries to relevant research centers and international organizations and NGOs, proved to be a diverse and qualified assembly which broached a fair discussion on the issue, delving into the matter considering several points of view and taking care of differing interests.

Experts from Ministries and administrations and research institutions of Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria and partners in European Projects on transportation, explained from different perspectives and through their concrete experiences how cutting-edge technologies and well-planned solutions for transportation could enable and foster the socio-economical development of the alpine area, but also of other mountain areas often isolated and deprived of basic infrastructure.

On the other hand, several presentations were expressly dedicated to mountain environments specificities and their richness in biodiversity, with a focus on how to assess the services offered by such ecosystems to mountain inhabitants and also to lowlands population. In this context, the current experiences of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) to reward poor highlands areas and measures conducted in the Carpathians were also presented to the public.

The Conference mainly stressed few points. That transportation is responsible for a remarkable share of emissions in the mountains, having an important impact on the regional economy and quality of life, but also on the environment and the functionality of regional ecosystems. That mountain ecosystems are extremely fragile and provide important services to both people living inside and outside the mountains. That the combination of lower emissions and appropriate incentives for valuable services’ provision from the mountains can start an important path to sustainable development of mountain areas worldwide. Some policies already exist on both sides, including more efficient transport systems, PES (Payments for ecosystems services). At the same time a few good experiences have been presented where effective transport services seem to go hand in hand with a high environmental quality of the mountain environment, e.g. in Austria and Switzerland.

More, European projects of regional cooperation presented during the day are supposed to lead to shared data and solutions in the field of transportation, while promoting exchange of know how, harmonization of methods and awareness raising throughout the European countries. The Alps and Carpathians but also other mountain ranges of the world could take benefits from such transborder works. SWOMM will continue in its effort to promote reasoning and information on this topic.

Presentations of the Speakers

Tags: Ecosystem services, environment, Food and Agriculture Organization, Non-governmental organization, Sustainable development

This entry was posted on 22/12/2010 at 16:38 and is filed under Info, SWOMM 2010, The world of sustainable mobility: news & tidbits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.