IGD

Institute of Geography and Sustainability of the University of Lausanne
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Mountain commons in the face of global change: analysing the past to understand present changes (MOUN)

Research fields Cultures and natures of tourism
Keywords Interdisciplinary
Commons
Mountains
Funding CIRM and FGSE
Duration April 2020 - April 2021
Website
Researchers Reynard Emmanuel (Scientific collaborator) [web] [email]
Hürlemann Seraina (Scientific collaborator) [web] [email]
Gros-Balthazard Marjolaine (Scientific collaborator) [web] [email]
Canevet Léa (Scientific collaborator) [web] [email]
Kebir Leïla (Project coordinator) [web] [email]
Stéphane Nahrath (Scientific collaborator)
Lorenzetti Luigi (Scientific collaborator)
Leggero Roberto (Scientific collaborator)
Otero Iago (Scientific collaborator)
Decorzant Yann (Scientific collaborator)

In recent years, new self-managed collective structures have developed in mountain areas around the preservation or development of resources. While historical natural or land-based mountain community management systems meet the original definition of Ostrom as common-pool resources (Ostrom, 1990), these new commons (on the sense of Hess 2008) are built upon new objects (tourist destination, ski lifts, urban features, etc.), with more flexible contours and institutional arrangements (Kebir, Nahrath and Wallet, 2018) than historical commons (pastures, water, forests, etc.).

New commons have been, so far, mainly studied in urban contexts (Festa, 2016; Foster and Iaione, 2015). Based on an interdisciplinary project, our objective is to document the existence of such new commons in mountain areas and highlight their specificities. It aims at contributing to current debates on new commons, especially regarding their potential to address issues such as climate change, tourism transition, lowland-upland relationships.

During the past year, our research team has identified more than 80 new mountain commons, mainly in the Swiss Alps, dealing with infrastructures such as ski lifts or energy production, heritage (community projects for architecture renovation of bread oven, watermills, pastoral hamlets…), local service production (community groceries, cafés, BnBs', maternity ward…).



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