Public Participation in Mountain Ecosystem Management

The first objective of this project is the assessment of participative approaches to mountain forest ecosystem management in Europe. Within the objective, there are three sub-objectives:

• comparative analysis of participative approaches to mountain forest ecosystem management based on a comparative analysis of existing case-studies;
• classification of approaches based on the degree of information exchange and potential involvement of stakeholders into the decision making process;
• definition of "participation" cultures based on the reviewed case studies 'General conclusions and guidelines for participation practice'.

The second project objective is the local applicability of general guidelines. Also this objective is divided into three sub-objectives:

• evaluation of social conflicts related to a local erosion-control management project;
• identification of indicators for assessing local conditions in the view of general guidelines;
• evaluation of local approaches for integrating the participative elements based on the established classifications (objective 1).