ACTUAL ÓRGANO NACIONAL COMPETENTE (SENAPI)

Andreas Muhar and Dominik Siegrist

Introduction

Many forms of tourism and outdoor recreation take place in landscapes. In particular cultural landscapes in rural areas, which are focal in the landscape stewardship discourse, often exhibit a significant attractiveness for tourism developments or recreational activities. Therefore, the multifaceted inter-dependency between landscape management and the management of tourism and recreation is highly relevant for the formulation of strategies and policies towards landscape stewardship.

There is a plethora of definitions for the key terms ‘tourism’ and ‘outdoor’ recreation. The World Tourism Organisation defines tourism as ‘a social, cultural and economic phenomenon which entails the movement of people to countries or places outside their usual environment for personal or business/professional purposes’ (UNWTO 2014). While recreation is an ‘activity that people engage in during their free time, that people enjoy, and that people

recognise as having socially redeeming values’ (Hurd and Anderson 2011), outdoor recreation specifically stands for activities undertaken outside of buildings, with or without specific infrastructure. These activities can be performed both by tourists and by local residents. In the context of visits to cultural landscapes tourism often has a rather economic connotation while recreation does not necessarily imply direct economic effects, though it is impossible to clearly separate these two terms in practice. The public interest in outdoor recreation is grounded in the effects on physical and mental health as well as on social cohesion. In fact opportunities for outdoor recreation are often considered by citizens to be a public good (Yuan and Fredman 2008, Boman et al. 2013).

Tourism developments and the provision of recreational facilities change the character and the identity of cultural landscapes. A focus on negative impacts from tourism can be seen in the critical literature since the 1970s (see e.g. Krippendorf 1975, Butler 1980, Jungk 1980, Mathieson and Wall 1982, Singh 2012). Causes for this criticism were the rapid urbanisation of previously rural areas such as coastal and mountain regions e.g. by extensive hotel and second home construction, the degradation of landscapes due to transport facilities and other technical constructions (motorways, cable cars, ski lifts etc.), the pressure on ecosystems by excessive uses, the accumulation of waste and other forms of pollution, as well as the social and economic impacts on local communities.

While acknowledging the numerous negative impacts of tourism on the social ecological system of a cultural landscape by out-of-scale developments, in this chapter we focus on the potential synergies between tourism, outdoor recreation and landscape stewardship. Income generation for the local community from tourism activities can be seen as a contribution to economic sustainability, however, there can be many more potentially positive effects: Tourism creates interest in local landscape and land use history, it brings innovative persons into sometimes peripheral and underdeveloped regions and on a political level it can even help to develop programmes for protecting landscapes.

Our statements are supported by practical examples from different geographical regions, however with a focus on countries of the Alpine Arc, as this is the area in which we authors have our own empirical research experience.

Landscape demands from tourism and outdoor recreation

Visitors to cultural landscapes, both tourists and recreationalists, exhibit a diversity of motivations, such as the interest in cultural traditions, the appreciation of scenic beauty, the desire for relaxation or the pleasure of physical exercise. Depending on the individual demands they will value certain parts of the landscape differently (Scolozzi et al. 2015) and will of course also perform different activities.

Due to their high structural diversity as a result of the interplay between anthropogenic and natural features, traditional cultural landscapes are generally well suited to also accommodate a high diversity of activities, in many cases even better compared to natural landscapes. This is particularly owed to the fact that in cultural landscapes an extensive linear (road and trail) infrastructure is available as a consequence of historical and current land uses, which can be utilised for purposes of tourism and recreation (Fig.10.1). While adventure sports such as canyoning, off-road mountain biking or paragliding receive a lot of attention in the media, the reality of European rural tourism and outdoor recreation is that trail based activities such as hiking, cycling or cross-country skiing are by far the most relevant activities.

Preference studies in the context of landscape based tourism and recreation reveal a general consensus on the value of structural diversity and perceived naturalness (Buchecker et al. 2008, Boll et al. 2014). However, naturalness as perceived by visitors to a landscape can be quite different from ecological naturalness based on scientific assessment (Tveit et al. 2006): Many actors, both on the side of the consumers (tourists, recreationists) and even on the side of the providers (hoteliers, project developers) tend to perceive cultural landscapes as

‘natural’ and therefore do not recognise the need for continuous management and

maintenance. As a typical example, meadows and pastures, although an outcome of human cultivation, will be regarded as ‘nature’ by the majority of visitors, and this is even more true for managed forests.

Of course, also landscape elements that can clearly be identified as anthropogenic by the visitors, such as terraces, stone walls, religious symbols and agricultural buildings are valued highly, in particular when they are seen as constituents of an ‘authentic tradition’. Therefore a large majority of EU citizens agree that agriculture contributes to the beauty of the

countryside (European Commission 2012). As opposed to the attitude of the local residents, tourists also appreciate signs of decay such as ruins of old cottages or abandoned farmland (Buchecker et al. 2008, Fig. 10.2). In particular, early stages of succession, as long as they are still rich in flowers and berries, can be quite attractive for recreation and tourism.

An overview of contributions of tourism supporting landscape stewardship

Tourism as a major economic player in many peripheral regions with significant cultural landscape heritage is often challenged to contribute to the maintenance of landscapes or landscape elements (Ketterer Bonnelame and Siegrist 2014). In the following section we give an overview of the direct and indirect ways in which this contribution can be facilitated.

Direct financial contributions on local level Entrance fees to the landscape

Across Europe there is a high diversity of land tenure systems that is reflected in legal regulations on access of the public to the countryside. Generally speaking, in the Nordic countries there is a tradition of almost unrestricted access, while in many Southern European countries private landowners have more possibilities to exclude the public from their land. Until recently this was also true for the UK as a whole, however, in 2003 Scotland moved to more public access rights (Vergunst 2013) and in 2015 the Welsh government conducted a consultation process for providing more opportunities of public access to the land that might result in legal changes. In most other Western, Central and Eastern European countries access to forests, pastoral’ and ‘unproductive’ land such as high mountains are largely granted to the public.

Tourism activities in the countryside are predominantly utilising the extensive agricultural road or trail network that is mostly open to the public. Therefore, in the largest parts of Europe the cultural landscape is experienced by tourists and recreationists as publicly accessible, independent of the legal status and hence there is very little acceptance for a general entrance fee to the landscape in order to fund landscape maintenance, as this is rather regarded as a duty of the state (Higuera et al. 2013, Bastian et al. 2015).

Exceptions can only be justified towards the public in spectacular landscape situations where specific tourism infrastructure is provided to access these landscape elements, such as

canyons or caves. However, even access to National Parks is free in most European countries. Fees for services and infrastructure

While tourists and recreationists are very sensitive about general entrance fees, they are still willing to pay for certain services and for the use of specific tourism infrastructure. In particular charging for car parking facilities and collecting road tolls for access into remote areas is widely accepted and funds generated from this can of course also be used to support landscape maintenance work. By implementing this measure the landscape is still perceived as publicly accessible, even when a majority of visitors in fact have to pay for accessing it. Collection of use fees often involves considerable transaction costs, in particular when fees are being collected manually by employed staff. Automatized solutions such as parking ticket machines with occasional monitoring by staff require a higher initial investment, but in the long run can generate more net funds available for landscape maintenance.

In the Cinque Terre National Park along the Ligurian coast in Northern Italy an interesting integrative funding scheme has been implemented: Due to steep cliffs and rugged terrain with ancient cultivation terraces (Fig. 10.3), road access is difficult and parking space is limited, however, the five villages of the park are well serviced by a train line running in tunnels between them. Hence, when the park was established, a traffic concept based on railway access was developed. The ‘Cinque Terre Card’ is a combination ticket for public transport into and within the National Park, also including admission to some of the most important hiking trails, a nature observation centre, an internet access point and several other services. In this way the card becomes a form of admission ticket to the national park. The most important project partner is the Italian State Railways, which had initially planned to close down the ticket offices in four out of the five villages. Meanwhile the railway stations have

been transformed into visitor centres and the ticket offices are managed by the park

administration. In exchange for this, the State Railways forgo a part of the income generated by the Cinque Terre Card to the park management and to the maintenance of the cultural landscape (Kah 2007).

Allocation of local tourism and consumption taxes

In most European countries local authorities such as municipalities impose taxes on tourist nights spent in hotels or other accommodation for funding of a variety of activities related to tourism, such as running tourist information offices or marking of hiking trails. So far, only a small number of cases exist where this tax is also dedicated for maintenance of the cultural landscape.

A prominent example is the municipality Münstertal in the Black Forest, Germany. About one third (0.36 € per guest night) of the local tourism tax is being used to support goat grazing on marginal land, thus keeping the landscape open (Liesen and Coch 2015). In the Weissensee Nature Park in Carinthia, Austria, parts of the local tourism tax are diverted for funding labour intensive agricultural practices such as scything (Heuberger 2010). Such programmes need to be carefully set up in order not to be in conflict with other agro environmental funding schemes, as e.g. most EU regulations prohibit any kind of double compensation of the same measure.

It is evident that a significant contribution to landscape maintenance via direct payments from tourism to agriculture can only be achieved in regions where tourism uses are intense and the tourism sector is economically viable, which means that the number of tourist nights and the revenues per guest are high. In regions where both agriculture and tourism are economically marginal, tourism tax revenues will not be sufficient to cover the needs.

In a simple calculation for Austria the magnitudes can be demonstrated: In the year 2013 there were 133 million guest nights recorded for the whole country, including urban areas

(Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft Forschung und Wirtschaft 2015). For the same year only those parts of the state based agricultural subsidisation scheme that are specifically relevant for landscape stewardship, i.e. agro environmental measures and compensations for less favoured areas, were at 795 million € (Bundesministerium für Land- und Forstwirtschaft 2015), which would result in a 6 € ‘landscape levy’ per guest night. If this was to be

implemented only for guest nights spent in rural regions, it would of course be much higher. This is far away from what local schemes can realistically come up with, as shown in numerous willingness-to-pay studies (Yadav et al. 2013, Bastian et al. 2015).

Direct input of labour: Volunteer tourism

When state programmes and markets fail to provide the means for the maintenance of cultural landscapes, civil society steps in. Voluntary engagement in landscape management has been growing in the past decades. There are many different ways in which this involvement can take place; voluntary work can be delivered individually at local level in the sense of

neighbourly help, but more often it happens to be organised as a group activity of either local residents or people from outside (Penker et al. 2014). Many protected areas such as national parks offer volunteer programmes.

Volunteer tourism actively involves tourists in local conservation and landscape management activities. A well-known example is the Mountain Forest Project (‘Bergwaldprojekt’), which has been successfully implemented in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Spain and the Ukraine.

Mostly for a full holiday week, volunteers engage in activities for the preservation of mountain forests such as tree planting, trail maintenance or erosion control (Elmer 2010). With this the participants not only support the protection of an important landscape element, but they also learn a lot about ecosystem functioning.

Globally, volunteer tourism is a rapidly growing sector (Wearing and McGehee 2013) and developing packages in the sense of selling international conservation work to tourists as a commodity has become a profitable business (Cousins et al. 2009). Volunteer tourists are not only willing to contribute their working time, but also to cover travel and accommodation costs as well as service fees to a brokering agent to spend their volunteering holidays in sometimes quite exotic locations.

In the context of European cultural landscapes, volunteer tourism of course has the greatest potentials in well-known locations with attractive landscape features or particular cultural traditions. Less spectacular regions outside tourism hotspots are more difficult to market to volunteer tourists.

The Swiss Parks Network offers a corporate volunteering programme for companies and their employees. In nine different parks collective one day landscape maintenance assignments are organised as an alternative to traditional annual works outings (Penker et al. 2014). After the completion of the works there is usually the opportunity to taste local food specialities. There are, of course, significant limitations to the kind of maintenance activities that can be performed in a one-off work assignment, in particular with regard to skills levels of

participants as well as safety issues. However, such a programme does not only aim to

contribute directly to landscape management but also indirectly by raising awareness of issues related to landscape stewardship with participants coming from the corporate world, who in their everyday life might not have this exposure.

Indirect economic effects

General effects on regional economy and welfare

Tourism contributes to the regional economy directly via expenditures for accommodation, food and services on site, while outdoor recreation of the local population or of day visitors usually creates less revenues. Landscape based tourism often takes places in regions where other sectors of the economy are weak. As tourism is a labour intensive industry, it offers employment opportunities for local residents across various educational levels and professional qualifications. In mountainous areas suitable for winter sports, seasonal

employments can be particularly attractive for farmers in times when there are fewer working tasks in agriculture. While this does not directly contribute towards landscape maintenance measures, tourism keep otherwise marginalised areas inhabited and economically viable. Consumption of locally produced goods

Principles of sustainable tourism ask for linking local product chains to tourism and in particular for marketing local products from sustainable land use practices (UNWTO 2010). In the context of European cultural landscapes this is very often about co-operation between local farmers, gastronomy and shops. In line with current food tourism trends, consumers are willing to pay higher prices for products from local, sustainable production, in particular in a holiday situation (Hall and Gössling 2013), where there is also the opportunity to see the environment in which agriculture takes place (Fig. 10.4).

‘Landscape management with fork and knife’ is a nice metaphor used in the Southern Black Forest Nature Park in Germany. Local restaurants are offering food produced from the region, thus not only keeping a larger share of the tourism expenditure in the region, but also

providing incentives for locals producers to conduct agricultural production with low

ecological impact practices such as organic farming. Specific labels can be used to highlight such products in shops and to make regional activities more visible. In Switzerland, a common labelling procedure has been developed for products from Swiss Parks in order to provide consistent quality standards and benefits for producers, consumers and parks (BAFU 2009). In a similar way regional parks in France try to promote synergies between tourism and regional development. Their label ‘Parc naturel régional’ serves as a quality designation for agricultural products, handicraft as well as tourism services and has meanwhile become well accepted by visitors. For example, the regional park Massif des Bauges actively

promotes the sale of local products such as wine, cheese, meat and herbs (Siegrist et al. 2015, Fig. 10.5).

However, local products can only be sold if they are available. Cultural landscapes with high land use diversity can offer a wider range of products than landscapes with highly specialised land uses. Mechanisation and industrialisation of agricultural production resulted in a de- mixing and separation of land uses on a larger scale thus reducing the agro diversity on the local level. For example, in the higher mountain regions of the Alps grain production has almost completely been abandoned, while in lowland regions that are better suited for cropland, hardly any pastoral land has been left over. Current initiatives for reintroducing grain production in the Alps, such as the Gran Alpin Co-operation in Switzerland (Bardsley and Bardsley 2014) can of course profit from co-operation with the tourism sector.

Indirect nonmonetary effects

Positive effects of tourism on landscape stewardship cannot only be limited to direct or indirect financial transactions; there are also a number of rather intangible effects beyond the economic dimension.

Sensitisation of visitors regarding landscape change

There is a fundamental assumption within the concept of sustainable tourism that visitors who are confronted with conservation issues and the dynamics of land use and landscape change are likely to support policies for landscape stewardship and also to adapt their individual behaviour. However, mere exposure to phenomena of landscape change might not be sufficient to stimulate reflection and thus induce behavioural changes, as the individual experience needs to be complemented by additional information and interpretation (Stremlow et al 2006, Powell and Ham 2008). Therefore, it is essential that tourism providers and their partners implement suitable means of communication about regional particularities, landscape dynamics and driving forces. In protected areas this can be a main task of the information facilities.

A frequently used instrument for sensitisation is interpretive trails (Eder and Arnberger 2007). In the year 1999 a catastrophic winter gale named ‘Lothar’ caused severe damages in

particular in the Northern Black Forest, Germany. Four years later, the Nature Conservation Centre Ruhestein implemented a concept for a trail on windfall damages and forest dynamics (‘Lotharpfad’) to inform visitors about various aspects of natural and human impacts on the