Sample project
What is the potential of social innovations in the Alps to reduce dependencies from economic growth?
Within an SNF-project and cooperating with the Eidg. Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft (WSL), we investigate the potential of social innovations in the Alps and ask to what extent these could be an alternative to traditional economic growth models.
Especially, the tourism, construction, and health sectors in the alpine regions hit growth boundaries. This might, for example, be caused by climate change or urban sprawl. Due to these growth boundaries, a transformation seems inevitable. Social innovation can contribute to reduce the dependencies on growth in these sectors and regions thereby increasing the resistance to economic shocks.
The concept of social innovation delivers promising possibilities for new paths of coping with social challenges like migration, lack of services, or aging populations, especially in the rural context. An investigation of the private actors and industries are missing in this literature so far. This project aims to close this gap in research investigating traditionally growth-orientated sectors like tourism, construction, or the health sector in the alpine region.
Figure 1: Climate change and a loss in snow demands alternative strategies and innovations in alpine destinations
Our results from prior studies indicate that alpine regions reach growth boundaries. In tourism for example, the decrease in snow days together with changing preferences of the guests leads to a decreasing demand for skiing. Compensating for this loss needs long-term strategies that are less growth-orientated.
