GOVQoL project partners met in the ski resort of Kransja Gora near the triple border between Austria, Italy and Slovenia for the second time since the beginning of the project from October 14th til 17th – right in the middle of the national food festival, which was a delightful coincidence for them!
The objective of the partner meeting was to review the ten pilot territories and progress made with these pilot territories to work on local governance of quality of life. Information about all pilot territories will soon be available on the website but in a nutshell: these ten pilots cover a wide range of Alpine municipalities in terms of population, accessibility, altitude, public infrastructure and demographics. Albeit this, the analysis of the first workshops’ results show some similarities between the concerns expressed by local stakeholders. Indeed, quality of life seems to be closely linked to the quality of Alpine environment in which people live and their access to services of public interest such as transport infrastructure, but this is not reflected in the priority actions local stakeholders would like to see implemented – actions related to healthcare or climate change mitigation do not emerge for the time being for instance. The short-term characteristic of local governance due to mayors’ mandates seems to be reflected in the community thinking about priorities for their municipality.
This will be further reflected upon in the upcoming months and next GOVQoL deliverables, namely an analysis of governance gaps and a handbook for practitioners. Indeed, our next step now is to identify the governance gaps in the Alps – for instance, how can we better ensure continuity of strategies between mayors mandates? How to articulate individual wants and community needs (without turning mayors into team managers attentive to each and everyone’s individual needs) ? How to balance municipality and population expectations in terms of service delivery? How to communicate about the role of governance and the perimeter of mayors’ responsibilities?
This intel will be further shared via online seminars soon to be announced which will gather a wide variety of Alpine stakeholders to discuss and exchange knowledge about local governance of quality of life.
As a reminder, GOVQoL stems from the results of the RSA 10 report which you can consult here : https://www.alpine-space.eu/programme-2021-2027/10th-report-on-the-state-of-the-alps-quality-of-life-in-the-alps-published/
Don’t hesitate to get in touch & visit our website for more information !
