Abstract ID: 3.11239 | Accepted as Talk | Talk/Oral | TBA | TBA

European Mountains are now threatened by climate warming twice as fast as in lowland areas, which adds on issues like lower investments and youth migrating away. Agriculture, and forestry, are particularly vulnerable to collapsing effects notably through precipitations changes and glaciers disappearing but also by migrations of predators. Addressing these challenges requires systemic policy interventions. To this end, a European policy roadmap has been developed, framing governance and policy changes necessary to enhance the sustainability and resilience of mountain areas. The roadmap was developed from work with multi-actor platforms (MAP) in 23 European regions, which brought together actors from different sectors (agriculture, industry, tourism, administration, research) and from all steps (production, processing, distribution) of a focal value chain (VC). Participatory research with the MAPs, such as workshops, interviews and surveys, were completed with mapping of land use in 2050 and integrated with youth engagement events, cross-regional comparisons and visits, and most importantly foresight exercises during which actors co-created scenarios for their VC in 2050. We first confirmed that stakeholders perceive important changes and are already implementing strategies, although adaptive capacity and agency widely varies across regions. Foresight results pointed to four archetypes emerging around the main strategies for VC development: economic driven, nature driven, knowledge & innovation driven and niche & diversification driven. These archetypes were one of the results showing that although mountains SES encompass immense diversity, common challenges and needs are prevalent, as well as a common sense of powerlessness. From these key-learnings, a common narrative advocating for policy and governance changes was framed into the roadmap for “unlocking the potential of Mountain Product Value Chains to enhance the sustainability and resilience of mountain areas”. It contains a policy intervention logic that highlights how policy instruments can be best leveraged for systemic implementation in the regions around building blocks that are thematic bundles of policy reforms. The key-learnings of the project, which we would like to present in this session, will be a very valuable insight for the global research agenda, in terms of content for sustainability in mountain regions and for collaborative research processes.