ProMontesPrize
The holding of the ProMontesPrize competition was postponed indefinitely.
Award for research work on the future of the cultural landscape in the Alpine region
ProMontesPrize 2023
PrixProMontes 2023
The Swiss Foundation for Alpine Research feels compelled to promote research for securing the future of man-made cultural landscapes in the mountain region, because these, in contrast to the natural grasslands, forests and moorlands, are given too little consideration by established nature conservation efforts.
The 20th century has led to rapid changes also in the Alpine region. For example, mountain forests have largely recovered from the overexploitation of the 19th century, and the grasslands of the alpine level have also benefited from nature conservation measures. On the other hand, the traditional cultural landscape suffers from the socio-economic development trends of the last decades. Tourism and traffic development opened opportunities for the mountain population to earn money, which made landscape conservation negligible.
Thus, the open-land biotopes – habitat of one third of the alpine biodiversity spectrum – are for better or worse dependent on an eco-compatible agriculture. For on the one hand, intensification of agriculture in profitable locations leads to species decline. On the other hand, where the lack of jobs and public services forces people to migrate, the abandonment of farming also leads to a decline in biodiversity due to competing reforestation.
Probably the greatest challenge for all landscapes and life forms in the Alpine region is increasingly posed by the consequences of climate change. Periods of temperature rise, glacier retreat and drought have occurred several times during the past millennia of the Holocene. But the climate change of the ”Anthropocene” is characterized by a rapidity that equals an enormous adaptation pressure for humans and animals and plants already in the near future.
Securing the future for the cultural landscapes of the Alps therefore requires a whole bundle of measures; from governmental research funding to innovative private engagements and to legally paving the way. The Swiss Foundation for Alpine Research is committed to supplement this bundle of measures with new findings from junior research.
In line with the objective of the ProMontesPrize:
Alpine biodiversity instead of Alpine wasteland!
ProMontesPrize 2023
PrixProMontes 2023
ProMontesPrize 2021
PrixProMontes 2021
ProMontesPrize 2018
ProMontesPrize 2016
ProMontesPrize 2014
ProMontesPrize 2012