Climate change: Enhancing the resilience of mountain areas

Mountains, which cover 36% of Europe’s surface area, play a pivotal role in providing a range of public and private goods. Their role is both ecologically and socioeconomically significant. However, there is a notable gap in our understanding of many aspects of these regions, which is crucial for their sustainable management. This lack of understanding becomes increasingly pressing as climate and social changes impact on mountain areas, creating a wave of uncertainty for the future of mountain value chains and communities.

The Horizon 2020 project MOVING (MOuntain Valorisation through INterconnectedness and Green growth), launched in 2020, is designed to address this need. MOVING aims to identify threats and opportunities, seeking strategies towards making mountain areas more resilient and sustainable. Mar Delgado, the project coordinator: “We want to make our policymakers understand that mountains are not areas with constraints, but territories brimming with opportunities – from their rich diversity and high-quality resources to their pivotal role in providing water and energy. The biggest opportunity is that mountains house a community of motivated actors fighting for the future of mountains.”

MOVING strives to build the capacities of mountain regions and their stakeholders. This includes the co-development of policy frameworks to maintain and improve practices, sharing knowledge and expertise, co-creating research, improving value chains and enhancing the value of products and services in mountain regions.

In order to achieve this, the project set up multi-actor platforms in a number of reference regions to bring stakeholders together - value chain actors, stakeholders, policy-makers and others, enabling them to work together through bottom-up participatory processes.

MOVING has already published many useful materials, including: