Multiple-Level Governance is Needed in the Social-Ecological System of Alpine Cultural Landscapes

A large variety of institutions and stakeholders, from local farmers and citizen associations to the European Commission, act in or influence social-ecological systems (SESs) in alpine cultural landscapes. This influence raises the system's complexity compared to historic management of local natural resources by local communities for predominantly local objectives. This chapter analyses this change of complexity in the governance of an alpine cultural landscape. It investigates the processes acting on the selected landscape, which key variables operate at which levels of governance, and how these processes may affect the sustainability of the system. The chapter combines Gunderson and Holling's perspective of panarchy with Ostrom's framework. It identifies the subsystems of a wider system in the alpine SES, and focuses on its different levels and scales. Finally, the chapter builds conceptual models on the basis of ecological and socioeconomic information.