Our colleague Benoît Nenert from La Fabrique des Transitions shares his reflections on how Alpine territories can rethink their future in times of change.
La Fabrique des transitions leads a cross-party alliance of local authorities and people who are renewing the way transitions are managed, with a systemic approach. Born from the experience of pioneering transition territories in France, it brings together more than 400 public and private organizations (local authorities, networks, associations, businesses, NGOs, medias, universities, etc.) and 1,000 people. Together, they form a community where experiences are shared, that supports territories in developing local transition practices and scaling them up.
What is our reference framework ?
We think that a radical change is necessary due to the inability of the current socio-economic model to meet the challenges of climate change : resources scarcity, accelerated loss of biodiversity and increasing environmental health risks. The ecological transition is a way of redirecting the search for an ecosystemic balance in order to preserve the conditions of habitability of the Earth for living beings (evolution towards a new economic and social model, one that renews our ways of consuming, producing, working and living together)
This kind of change means finding the path from the OLD MODEL (Pyramid, Fossil, Financialized, Hyper-competitive, « Nation States ») which is NOT SUSTAINABLE, to a NEW MODEL (Uncertainties, Weak Signals, Distributed, Cooperative, Multifunctional Economy, Circular, Territories), for which REFERENCES HAVE TO BE FOUND.
To walk on this path, 2 directions should be followed :
- Deconstructing the old model through facts and analysis,
- Design desired and affordable new model thanks to new imaginary, setting in narrative(s).
TRANSITION & ADAPTATION ARE A QUESTION OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT & TRANSFORMATION
To face this huge challenge, at la Fabrique des transitions we can rely on our 4 pillars coming from pioneers territories in France, also valid for managing transition in mountain areas :
- The commitment of local players as a resource,
- taking integrated action, focusing on the systemic effects of action,
- working in cooperation, which does not mean thinking all the same thing (on the contrary, it means dealing with conflicts),
- assess the value created and question the relationship between the value and the resources mobilized to bring about a new economic model.
I would like to share with you some insights coming from what we have done with a dozen of mountain territories in the Alps and other massifs in France.
All these programs have given us a better understanding of the diversity of the issues involved. If we are serious about the transition of mountain regions, then we need to consider the diversity of situations and look beyond preconceived ideas.
From an economic point of view, tourism, particularly skiing, remains a key driver of activity. However, in France, it is quite unknown that more people visit the mountains in summer than in winter. What’s more, as far as skiing is concerned, 80% of the activity (and therefore employment) is located in 20% of the resorts (the large and very large resorts in the French Alps – 250 ski resorts in total in all massifs). Most of these resorts are located at high altitude. For them, the model is still running at full speed, and they still have the snow and substantial financial resources to rationalise and adapt their infrastructures to climate change.
For these resorts, the danger does not come from the decline in snow cover, but from their heavy dependence on a single activity and on factors external to their region: with over 50% of their clientele coming from abroad, any climatic, geopolitical and/or health event can suddenly call into question their operations, as we have seen with the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and extreme events such as landslides blocking access to the resorts.
For the others, i.e. 80% of France’s 250 resorts, the challenge is simply to maintain business in the short term. The lack of snow has highlighted the structural weaknesses of these destinations, many of which have been coping for many years with operating deficits and high levels of debt. While all these players have more or less explored (without significant success so far) the path of tourism diversification and the famous ‘4 seasons’ (‘two full seasons would already be very good’ say professionals in the sector), we can nevertheless distinguish at least 3 categories:
- Those forced to close because they cannot continue to finance the loss of revenue,
- Those continuing to invest in artificial snow and property development,
- And those looking for new operating methods to last a few more seasons and moderate the impact of closure.
2 years after the start of these programs, the fact is that there is no ski resort which has successfully managed a transition (as defined previously). The only one that has decided to redirect its model is Métabief (Jura massif, France), by planning to cease operating its downhill ski area around 2030. No others have followed Métabief with a similar approach, but there are numerous initiatives in all the massifs. They are many and varied, launched by citizens, elected representatives or economic players, but they all say one thing: we need to get moving! Despite all these ‘bubbles of the future’ that are appearing, only a few of them are leading to a real transformation start. There are several reasons for this:
- A difficulty in breaking out of the traditional tourism patterns, particularly in skiing, for which there is no new model capable of generating as much turnover quickly;
- Financial subsidies from certain local authorities continue to be distributed for skiing;
- A strong cultural and social attachment on the part of local people;
- A complex territorial organisation with many layers, making cooperation between players difficult;
- A concept of transition based on green growth and techno-solutionism;
- Negative reception of citizens’ initiatives campaigning for a paradigm shift, etc….
So, if we leave aside those areas that have deliberately chosen to maintain their current model, many mountain areas are at a crossroads:
- How will the shifts observed make it possible to rethink the ways in which they are managed, particularly by local authorities?
- How can cooperation be established in practice, and enable a real dynamic of co-construction (and not just consultation)?
- How can we retain local players who have been involved in the emerging dynamics so that they continue to be committed?
- How can territories be supported in the intermediate phase between the emergence of experiments and their implementation on a larger scale?
- How can evaluation be designed to take an interest in the effects of the approach undertaken in order to better reveal the value created, over and above the purely quantitative & financial dimension?
There is no magic formula. But throughout our work, we have identified the following areas which we believe are essential to triggering and supporting transition strategies.
A ski resort, whatever its size, is not an entity with clearly defined boundaries. It is more than just a defined ski area; it is an ecosystem (economic, social, territorial, legal, cultural), a complex, multi-stakeholder, hybrid organisation, combining public and private intervention, with diverse modes of governance and a perimeter that is sometimes difficult to define. In this respect, assessing the direct and indirect economic impact of ski lift operations is particularly tricky and open to debate.
The future of ski resorts is as much an emotional, cultural and identity-related issue as it is an economic one. In the current context, the subject is extremely sensitive, and is the subject of controversy and conflict. The mountains and skiing are the symbol of the Anthropocene’s challenges, with media overexposure conveying clichés, approximations and preconceived ideas. All this leads to bring radical positions face to face.
That’s why it’s tricky to tackle directly the transition of a small or medium-sized resort. This often leads to a focus on emotional aspects or overly infrastructural projects.
We therefore feel it would be preferable not to deal solely with the resort, but to give priority to the regional project in the broadest sense, taking into account the territory’s needs and challenges. We can highlight 5 key recommendations:
- rely on narrative to bring people together more widely and avoid falling into technocratic language that loses the players on the ground. This engineering of storytelling would facilitate the work of mourning, coupled with the work of creating a desire to define a vision, to have ‘a star’, etc.
- Undertake in-depth work on the links between heritage and transition in mountain areas, to develop a broadly participative cultural approach that enhances the identity of these areas.
- Despite the urgency of the situation, we need to take the time to listen to the different visions for the future of the territory and put the project back on the long-term.
- Emphasise the need to mobilise economic players beyond the socio-professionals in the tourism industry, and to deconstruct the myth of regional attractiveness and the dogma that ‘without tourism everything is finished’.
This type of scheme would make it possible to integrate the ski resort issue indirectly through other concrete initiatives, such as thinking about local economic models based on new approaches, through the wood industry, agriculture and food, energy, regenerative hydrology, etc. To do this, it is important to focus on exploring heritage attachments and, at the same time, thinking about the territorialisation of the economy as a whole (not just the tourism economy).
- Putting conflict to work, developing the engineering of democratic dialogue and cooperation.
Regardless of the scenario chosen (breakthrough scenario involving the closure of the ski resort from one season to the next, or scenario planning for closure in a few years’ time), opposition and conflict are inevitable. Engineering democratic dialogue and cooperation is therefore needed to put these conflicts to work. Only a gradual and transparent process leading up to a decision, and involving all the stakeholders, will make it possible to mitigate them.
Controversies and conflicts of varying degrees of violence are inherent in any transition process. It is therefore necessary to play down the conflict.
Often it’s the way in which decisions are taken that causes the conflict, rather than the decisions themselves.
First of all, there is a need to educate people about the concept of consultation, which is sometimes seen in a caricatured and naïve way by those who want to implement it and those who take part in it.
Consultation is not about reaching agreement: it is about dealing with conflict. To achieve this, it is important to take account of people’s attachments to places, rather than trying to impose an institutional response from the outset. Managing these conflicts must not lead to a feeling of downgrading.
To conclude I would say that using conflict and moving beyond it allows us to think more broadly and, ultimately, to reduce tensions. Most of the time, the problem is not the ski resort but the absence of a broader regional project. This means drawing out the consequences of the project for local stakeholders, and responding with a broader alternative project. The scale of the alternative is not just around the conflicting project, but across the whole area.