Protected Areas in the Slovak Carpathians as a Contested Resource Between Metropolitan and Mountain Stakeholders

Abstract

Acknowledgements The present article emerged at the interface of transdisciplinary research and practice with the Slovak State Nature Conservancy (SNC) and local stakeholders. The authors would therefore like to thank the many initiative people for their engagement for local action on the ground. While we cannot list them all, we would like to mention the mayor of Ubla, Nadeshda Sirkova, and the mayor of Zboj, Ladislav Ladomirjak, both in Poloniny National Park, as well as farmer Jan Bariak from Snohy, in Poľana Biosphere Reserve. We thank Zusana Okániková of Slovak NGO "pronatur" as well for developing a spin-off i.e. a twinning between Entlebuch Biosphere Reserve in Switzerland and Poľana Biosphere Reserve in Slovakia. The process of adapting the Swiss baseline methodology to the needs of large protected area management in Slovakia benefitted crucially from our excellent collaboration with the University of Žilina. We extend our heartfelt thanks to Prof. Dr. Marián Janiga and Dr. Jaroslav Solár of the Institute of High Mountain Biology in the High Tatras. The authors thank the coordinator of this Swiss Contribution programme at SNC, Ivan Koubek, for networking and fostering exchange between conservationists and local stakeholders in the Slovak pilot regions, as well as between Slovak and Swiss colleagues, mayors, farmers, and researchers of CDE at the University of Bern.

The Demogeographic Crisis in Racha, Georgia: Depopulation in the Central Caucasus Mountains

“…In the Ukrainian Carpathians, depopulation became dominant after the demise of the Soviet Union and with the ensuing transition process (Kuemmerle et al 2008; Angelstam et al 2013;Warchalska-Troll and Troll 2014). Depopulation coupled with land abandonment and forest encroachment is also documented for Slovakia's central and eastern mountains, Polˇana and Bukovsk e Vrchy (Chovankova and Mladek 2002;Meessen et al 2015;Solar et al 2016), as well as for parts of the Polish side of the Carpathians (Kozak et al 2007). Farther to the east, evidence of depopulation has been provided for the Caucasus, including detailed demographic analyses comparing mountains and lowlands in North Ossetia-Alania (Gracheva et al 2012) and a general regional overview across the Caucasus (Radvanyi and Muduyew 2007).…”

Sustainable Local Development: Consolidated Framework for Cross-Sectoral Cooperation via a Systematic Approach

“…Source of Manuscript [16] Sustainability (Switzerland) [18] One Earth [54] Local Environment [55] Futures [56] Journal of Practice Teaching and Learning [57] Ambio [58] Geomatics and Environmental Engineering [59] Trames [60] Kybernetes [61] Local Environment [62] Resources Policy [63] Sustainability (Switzerland) [64] Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences [65] Public Administration and Development [66] World Sustainability Series [67] Public Works Management and Policy [68] Journal of Environmental Planning and Management [69] Sustainability (Switzerland) [70] Progress in Planning [71] Journal of Cleaner Production [72] Local Environment [73] Revue de Geographie Alpine [74] International Journal of Public Administration…”

“…For example, the use of case study, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and workshops was evident in [57], which investigated the influences of multi-level governance on the transformative capacity of local sustainability initiatives in Stockholm, Sweden. Four studies employed action research to understand the prospects of either a proposed [55,73,86] or an existing [79] CSC framework in a specific region, determining areas of improvement in that setting. In a case study, Quest et al [78] used methods such as workshop, paired discussion, and generation of pictorial outputs to articulate the future vision and mission of a partnership formed to achieve a sustainable food city.…”

Digital Participation Framework for Mountain Areas in Serbia

“…class divide (Graziano, 2021) or age divide (Alston, Dias and Phillips, 2015); but studies that take in account all relevant divides have not taken place yet. Protected MA research examined traditional (non-digital) public participation means (e.g., Meessen et al, 2015;Escobedo et al, 2022). However, the MA and perspective of different participation opportunities in the digitalized era were not a focus of academic studies, even though the impact on the participation of urban-rural differences was often addressed (Radovanović and Knežević, 2014;Williamson and Ruming, 2019;Rajhans et al, 2020).…”