Improved mobility, improved air quality in rural and mountain areas – Rural Vision Week
Rural Vision Week
The European Network for Rural Development (ENRD) is organising in collaboration with DG AGRI the ‘Rural Vision Week: Imagining the future of Europe’s rural areas‘ from 22 to 26 March 2021 – online.
The Rural Vision Week will be a one-week European event to reflect with stakeholders on the Long Term Vision for Rural Areas, before its adoption by the European Commission later in June 2021. This interactive event will include high level presentations and discussions, a marketplace, workshops and ‘fringe’ activities.
Euromontana’s fringe workshop
In the framework of the Rural Vision Week, Euromontana will organise an online workshop “Improved mobility, Improved air quality in rural and mountain areas” on 25th March. This workshop will give the floor to rural and mountainous stakeholders and showcase inspiring solutions for an improved sustainable mobility in our regions.
On the one hand, air pollution is one of the most significant environmental risk factors for human health and transport remains a major source of air pollution. In some mountain resorts, up to 57% of greenhouse gas emissions come from transport, aggravating climate change and its consequences in already seriously affected regions.
On the other hand, mobility plays an important role in the attractiveness of a region. In many rural and mountain areas, there is a persisting car dependency due to many challenges (important distances to cover while the number of inhabitants can be low, geographical and natural handicaps such as slopes, altitude, heavy snowfall). The absence of adequate collective transport solutions and of clean and affordable mobility for all imposes social and territorial exclusion of some segments of rural inhabitants.
To increase the health and well-being of rural and mountain inhabitants, the Long-Term Vision for Rural Areas should make sure that not only “mobility is available and affordable for all, that rural and remote regions are better connected” as requested by the new EU Mobility Strategy, but also that clean mobility with more decarbonised mobility options for goods and persons is also largely deployed in these territories.
This fringe workshop will include a presentation of the Alpine Convention’s 8th report on “Air Quality in the Alps” and on some clean mobility practices from the Alpine region. It will also showcase some inspiring initiatives from the Interreg Alpine Space ASTUS project, including its toolbox for local and regional authorities to increase clean mobility on a day-to-day basis.