Résumé traduit Translated abstract
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As a result of structural changes in agriculture and other socio-economic areas, in many regions, the maintenance of the traditional cultivated Alpine landscape and ecological reproduction measures for the preservation of living and usable areas are under increasing pressure. Human economic activities have become increasingly removed from the biotic and regenerative resources of the landscape and the number of people employed in agriculture and forestry is steadily decreasing, a change which is also affecting the Alpine regions. On the other hand, the value of the landscape is rising in terms of social estimation. In the absence of corrective measures, structural change can have external negative effects on the landscape. The direct destruction of the landscape and loss of extensive areas of high landscape quality would indicate that previous property systems governing landscape resources were inadequate against the background of the prevailing macro social, political and economic trends. In view of the degradation of quality as effect of overuse and under¬use of landscape resour¬ces, the question arises as to whether new (or rediscovered old) forms of the social binding of proper¬ty and forms of collective action should not be tested. These include common-property and similar regimes.
Our study (as part of the Swiss National Research Program 48 "Landscapes and habitats of the alps", www.pnr48.ch) analyses the use of different goods and services provided by a specific lands¬cape, and addresses the question as to who, how and based on what rights landscape is used. This focus on used or unused landscape goods and services makes it possible to establish whether or not one use (e.g. agriculture) has a negative or positive effect on another use (e.g. recreation). The change of use of the landscape is evaluated by means of various landscape indicators in collaboration with the local actors and user groups. The analysis of the institutional regime of landscape, which incorporates the extent of regulation of goods and services (by public policies), on the one hand, and the coherency among actors (based on property and use rights), on the other, enables the comparison of the institutional degree of resource use with the changes in the sustainability of landscape use. The institutional resource regimes relating to landscape and their influence on landscape use were ascertained in six case studies. The first results of our study finished in 2004 showed that the institutional regime is strongly influencing the landscape qualities, but in the holistic sense of landscape definition including ecological, socio-cultural and aesthetic qualities there aren't any adequate property rights so that namely the aesthetical and socio-cultural qualities of landscape will become a "res nullius" status. Furthermore, the lack of coherency among actors is often caused by sectoral public policies and contradictory use rights in combination with increased extent of regulation and increased demand for use of landscape goods and services. This incoherency could be avoided or at least reduced by the formation of local/regional institutional actors (e.g. foundations, associations a.o.) incorporating the concerned and interested actors and disposing of collective rights.
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