Sustainable development in the Alps: the Mountaineering Villages (Bergsteigerdörfer) initiative

Mountain regions provide goods and services such as water, hydroelectricity, timber, biodiversity, recreation, etc. which are important not only to the local communities. International agreements and policy documents, namely the Alpine Convention, the Alpine Space programme, the European Union Strategy for the Alpine Region, and the 2030 Agenda, address these regions. The aim of this research is to investigate the potential of the Mountaineering Villages initiative, launched by the Austrian Alpine Association, to achieve the objective of sustainable development in the Alpine region in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of 2030 Agenda. For this purpose, an analysis was carried out to compare the Mountaineering Villages criteria and the SDGs. Results revealed that not only SDG15 and SDG6, which explicitly recognize the importance of mountains, but also other SDGs, in particular SDGs 4, 8, 9, 11 and 12, would be positively affected by the implementation of the MVs initiative. In fact, MVs are oriented towards the development of sustainable tourism, which means first and foremost safeguarding local natural and cultural values as unique and attractive elements, as well as the development of both mountaineering and tourism services, facilities and skills, thus promoting socioeconomic development of the area through the creation of jobs and the enhancement of local economies and communities.