Where Mountain and Island Realities Converge

Mediterranean island mountain regions are a specific and under-recognised category of mountain territories. They combine two geographical conditions that are often treated separately: mountainness and insularity. They are shaped both by altitude and by island constraints: limited land, water scarcity, distance from markets, seasonal pressures, coastal concentration, demographic imbalance and fragile resource systems.

Mediterranean mountain areas, especially insular ones, face complex challenges, pressures and opportunities and are vital to the regions and countries of which they form part. At European scale, they constitute hotspots of biodiversity and environmental capital, providing critical ecosystem services and cultural value. They are often under pressure and in structural decline, driven by climate change, biodiversity loss and the degradation of natural resources such as water, soil and forests. At the same time, they possess important assets and resources of European interest, which require integrated, place-based responses.

Assessing the effects of climate change and its impact on natural and semi-natural environments, and developing adaptation strategies, is not only a local issue. Euro-Mediterranean mountain areas are biodiversity hotspots and public assets of major importance. The objective is to renew the vision of policies and mechanisms for their development through strategic, interactive and multi-stakeholder debates across environmental, social, economic and governance challenges.

In fragile ecosystems threatened by local and global anthropogenic pressures, rural communities need motivation and livelihoods capable of sustaining a thriving economic and social fabric. Mobilising local stakeholders is therefore necessary, because these specific environments require practitioner knowledge, often including traditional knowledge transmitted to new actors.

These sensitive and threatened patrimonial territories are at the crossroads of global and European issues and very specific local and regional dynamics. Experiences and innovations developed there - including policies, tools and new technologies - can respond simultaneously to local specificities and global challenges.

The European Conference of Troodos-Cyprus was conceived around this combined condition. Its focus on the mountain territories of large Mediterranean islands - Cyprus, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearics - was a way of bringing the specificity of insular mountain territories into European and international debate. Mediterranean mountain areas, especially insular ones, remain largely underrepresented in European Union discussions despite their common recognised specificities. (Dimitris Goussios & François Lerin, “A European Conference on insular mountain territories in the Mediterranean”, in Mountain areas of large Mediterranean islands, 2021).

For MountMed, Mediterranean island mountain regions form a field of research, education and action. They are territories under pressure, but also territories of innovation potential: rich in biodiversity, cultural identity, local knowledge, mountain products, landscapes, community memory and emerging forms of cooperation.

MountMed contributes to a community of practice for Mediterranean island mountains. Such a community links scientists, local actors, public authorities, institutions, practitioners and mountain communities around shared problems and concrete methods. It is a way of moving from marginality to recognition, from fragmentation to cooperation and from vulnerability to territorial capacity.