Research database

The quality of life (shorter QoL) of the Alpine people has been recently under a lot of pressures, such as climate change, a decrease in accessibility of services of general interest, depopulation of remote areas and others. To tackle these challenges, local communities in the Alpine area should be well equipped in the field of governance, meaning that they should be able to monitor the QoL, identify inhabitants’ needs in this regard, integrate the topic of QoL into policymaking, and make the policy-making process, in general, more participative. With this in mind, the GOVQoL classifies as “roll-out project” as it will empower the governance capacity of Alpine communities by introducing them to existing tools and instruments focused on QoL or participation to do both, improve the skills of the local administration, and increase the knowledge of other stakeholders in local communities in how they can contribute and be more aware to the QoL as policy issue. The major outputs of the project are training seminars targeted at various Alpine stakeholders, on-site workshops with selected municipalities to evaluate the state of the art and prepare first, the place-based specific roadmaps for how to consider QoL in policy making on long-term basis in these municipalities, and then also an umbrella roadmap for the whole Alpine area. More to that, the current good practice governance instruments will be gathered in a handbook, available in all Alpine languages. The approach selected in the project derives from the capacity building processes and participative techniques since we will work directly with local communities, both to evaluate the situation and to improve their knowledge. Furthermore, the approach will be place-based since each of the selected municipalities will prepare their own, place-tailored roadmap. The added value of transnational approach is not only in exchange of governance instruments that exist across Alpine countries, but also in creating joint solutions for better local governance and consideration of QoL in policy making. This project, thus, corresponds both, to the AC Multiannual Programme, and to the overall Objective 4 of the EUSALP, focusing on governance and institutional capacity. In innovative manner, the project aims at transferring different Alpine instruments across the governance vertical, e.g. from national to the local level, and builds the skills and awareness of local communities towards QoL as a policy subject.