The challenge of developing a shared vision: Marittime Alps-Mercantour

A common conservation strategy is the driving force of sustainable socio-economic development in the Marittime Alps-Mercantour Transboundary Protected Area (TBPA). This area of about 1,000 km2 consists of the contiguous Italian Marittime Alps Regional Park and the French Mercantour National Park. Close collaboration is the result of a long history of shared endeavour and a maturing of a common vision. The two parks have come together to experiment using new forms of cooperative management and governance, expressed in a strategic plan for the governance of this TBPA. In 1987, the two parks signed a twinning agreement to undertake simple joint management activities for conservation and sustainable development. The cooperation began with shared wildlife management projects, e.g. to strengthen the population of ibex (Capra ibex), to reintroduce the bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus), and to monitor wolf (Canis lupus) populations. More ambitious cooperation projects followed, with the support of the EU’s INTERREG programme: since 1991, it has helped fund 17 projects with a total value of
EUR 10 million. These include management activities, such as the enhancement of a transboundary trail network and a common signposting system, and scientific research, such
as the All Taxa Biological Inventory (the only other directory
of this kind was prepared for the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in the USA). The shared vision and joint activities of Marittime Alps and Mercantour helped the two parks to win the European Diploma for Protected Areas in 1993 (renewed in 1998, 2003 and 2008). In 1998 they signed a new, more structured Twinning Charter, in which priority actions were identified for transboundary conservation and sustainable development. One of these related to sustainable tourism, which is why the parks jointly signed the EUROPARC European Charter for Sustainable Tourism. It has contributed greatly to the creation of a common transboundary identity: a ‘Mountain without Frontiers”.