The MRI Mountain Resilience Working Group will be holding a session at the 29th Session of the Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscapes Conference on 'Building Resilient Mountain Landscapes and Communities Across Europe.'
Chair: Angelo Jonas Imperiale, Department of Cultural Geography, Faculty of Spatial Sciences (University of Groningen)
Co-chairs: Romano Wyss, Wyss Conseil Scientifique / EPFL
Tobias Luthe, Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Frank Vanclay, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen
Call for Abstracts
Researchers working on resilience in mountain regions across Europe are invited to submit an abstract and present their research at the session.
Abstract submission deadline: 15 April 2022.
About the Session
In the last two decades, the likelihood, extent and intensity of disasters, especially climate-related disasters, have dramatically increased. Most vulnerable regions, including mountainous and rural areas, are disaster-prone, and are disproportionately affected by increasing climate-related disasters. In addition, these areas have been experiencing the negative consequences of global stresses (e.g. globalization, urbanization, resource scarcity, conflicts, and financial crises) and local social changes and impacts associated with such stresses (e.g. development mismanagement, land abandonment, degradation, and depopulation). Although mountain and rural people play a key role in providing goods and in maintaining mountain and rural ecosystems, they are usually among the world’s poorest and most marginalized people, with little or no influence on development policies, plans, programs, or projects (4P) that affect their lives.
Acknowledgment of the ecological fragility of mountain and rural environments, and recognition of the vulnerabilities and capacities of mountain communities, have resulted in the concept of ‘resilience’ gaining currency in the discourses surrounding sustainable development in mountain and rural regions. Integrating effective resilience-building strategies into development 4P is now understood as being crucial to enhance disaster risk reduction (DRR), reduce climate change risk, and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially in vulnerable regions. In these regions, such as mountainous and rural areas, to effectively integrate resilience-building strategies into development 4P, the capacity of local people to learn from past mismanagement, crises and disasters, and to transform towards sustainability in their localities, should be recognized, engaged and empowered at the local community level (i.e. community resilience) and across multiple governance levels (i.e. social resilience). However, there are still cultural, political and institutional barriers that hinder states from enhancing DRR and resilience, and from achieving sustainable development in mountain and rural regions. At the cultural level, there is still little acknowledgement of the social dimensions of resilience and of how it comes into action among local communities. At the political and institutional levels, there is still a lack of knowledge about which processes are needed to effectively recognize, engage and empower resilience at the local community level and at multiple levels of social-ecological governance.
This session aims to overcome these barriers, and invites research contributions that explore the knowledge and governance strategies that are needed to build community and social resilience in mountainous and rural areas. Lessons learned from past failures, and examples of good practices of integrating community resilience-building strategies into recovery and sustainable mountain development interventions are welcome.
The PECSRL 2022 Conference
The 29th Session of the Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscapes, biennial International conference - Living together in European Rural Landscape – will be held in 2022 in two locations: Jaén and Baeza (Spain). It will be hosted by the University of Jaén and the UNIA-Antonio Machado in Baeza.
The Conference brings together geographers, historians, landscapes architects, archeologists, ethnographers, ecologists, rural planners, landscape managers and all other scholars interested in European landscapes. The Conference provides the perfect occasions to meet colleagues from all parts of Europe to get informed about various aspects of European landscape research and to initiate new projects. In addition to paper sessions, poster presentations, workshops and plenary sessions, there will be a full day of field trips which will give the PECSRL participants a detailed knowledge of the rural landscapes around Jaén.
More information and registration
Cover image by Damien Dufour Photographie on Unsplash
