Mountain areas in Norway as attractive rural scommunities or urban recreational playgrounds: the challenges to a mountain policy

There is an increased emphasis on using mountain areas as a resource for regional development. Simultaneously there has been an increase in areas that are protected, and a general strengthening of the protection of the environment in all mountain areas by the new Nature Diversity Act from 2009. Our research shows that Norway does not have a policy and management system that is able to handle the conflict that arises between development and protection, nor to benefit from the possibilities that might arise within this field. Mountain municipalities are facing a difficult situation, and are dependent on developing their mountain resources for local development. Many local actors do however perceive that their room for maneuver is strongly hindered by the environmental policy, and that there is inconsistence between the political ambitions on development and on protection. The authorities are more concerned about the interpretation and assessment of laws and rules rather than focusing on finding solutions that safeguard both development and protection, or contributes to reduce negative effects either for development or environment. In recent years there have been approved policies at national level with the intention of giving more power to local and regional actors over land-use and on development of mountain areas. One could expect that such policies would result in less conflict between local actors and national environmental authorities. The conflicts do however still persist and local actors still experience a strong centralized power. In the protected areas there is however a broad agreement, or accept, to continue the relatively restrictive policy regarding new activities. It is relatively few conflicts regarding protected areas, but those who come up are often deadlocked and have consequences far beyond their real importance. It is in the buffer-zones and other mountain areas we find most activities and where local actors want to develop business, and thus also where most conflicts arises. Our analysis indicates that there are multiple reasons why the level of conflicts is still so high: 1) political intentions on use and protection of mountain areas have not been given sufficient political weight or followed-up with sufficient changes in operational rules for land use, 2) the power of local authorities has not been significantly strengthened, as politically intended. Paradoxically, new and stricter enforcement of diverse sectoral regulations have strengthened the powers of national governments within environmental management, 3) political measures to increase local power has in reality very little influence on power relations, and 4) mountain areas have become increasingly important as a resource for local development. This last issue has become a significant additional factor in understanding why conflicts between the local and national level still persists. In many parts of the mountain areas tourism is seen as one of the few industries that can contribute to counteract the negative population development. Efforts in the municipalities to develop nature-based tourism is strongly influenced by national policies, reports from research etc., that emphasizes the potential here based on general trends. In our case-municipalities we see that in some places tourism has a real potential. This is particular in places within the "recreational hinterland" of larger cities, which have a potential for second home developments. Other places the ambitions related to tourism are more based on an uncertain hope that it might develop, and on a lack of other alternatives. In public efforts on tourism it must be made a clearer distinction between those few places where tourism can have the potential of being a basic industry that generates new employment, and the many other places where tourism "only" can be a supplement to other industries. In general national and local initiatives within tourism in mountain areas do lack sufficient regional analysis contributing with knowledge about markets and about the regional impacts of tourism. If we wish to achieve political ambitions on use and protection of mountain areas, there is a need to find better political models for development of mountain areas in Norway. On a general level the understanding of power and conflicts concerning use and protection must change, where we to a larger degree understand conflicts as legitimate and normally not possible to solve through authoritative consensus and use of power. Focus should rather be given to discuss how to handle power and conflicts, and how one by using broad socio-ecological knowledge can reach better solutions. On the practical level management of mountain areas must be more integrated, especially regarding land-use and decision-making powers. Regarding the latter the institution with power over land-use must have a broad responsibility for mountain areas, including local development and environment.

Mountain areas in Norway are characterized by a scattered and declining population and a reservoir of natural resources delivering services to the greater society, e.g. as huge protected areas and recreational landscapes with a significant number of agglo merations of second homes. New knowledge is needed to better understand the situation mountain municipalities are facing and what power premises and procedures and local development possibilities that should make up a mountain policy. One superior challen ge is to balance development of attractive local communities and development of mountain areas as suppliers of a range of services to urban core areas. The project´s objectives are to strengthen the knowledge baser for elaborating a mountain policy. Foc us will be the continuous struggle for community development in mountain municipalities, considering the potentially conflicting interests in rural tourism, planning and management of protected areas and local participation and influence. The theoretical perspectives are based on the integrated approach to mountain areas where the objectives of management of land, water and living resources are considered a matter of social choice. The former static-preservation paradigm is no longer supreme and a paradi gm of dynamic-innovation approach is emerging. The close relations between nature management and regional development in rural areas become evident, although not necessarily more emphasized in the unbalanced power relations between centre and periphery. We will apply a transdisciplinary approach, involving different disciplines as well as other members of society, like politicians and practitioners on different management levels. Main research methods will be comparative case studies in four selected mo untain regions in Norway. Comparative analysis will be conducted focusing on management regimes in mountain areas in Norway and comparable countries as Sweden, Scotland, Switzerland, Canada and USA.