Project leader: Regional Planning Association Grosses Walsertal

Project period: October 2001 to December 2004

In 2000 the Grosses Walsertal was designated by UNESCO as the first biosphere reserve since the new Seville guidelines. The EU-LIFE project, EcoMonte, represents the logical continuing development of initiatives from previous years which had the goal of promoting sustainable regional development. This includes the participatory development of a mission statement, making agriculture more ecologically sound, external marketing and regional exploitation of local biomass, and linking tourism with agriculture. The central pillar of the EU-LIFE project was to integrate already existing or planned individual measures and conceptual elements and to join them together; the project was jointly coordinated by REGIO and its partners – the department for the environment, energy institute and bureau for future issues – and supported with help from working groups in the valley and external experts.
The project included the 4 modules of project management: analysis of the status quo, management and proposal concept as well as exchange of experience and marketing. The principle goal was the use of EMAS (Eco Management and Audit Scheme) for a whole region as a pilot project. Indicators and criteria for regional environmental management or "Sustainable Quality Management" were developed and tested for the Grosses Walsertal; measures building on this were developed and implemented. These include, for example, the exploitation of the region’s potential for renewable energy sources (current percentage 85%), e5 certification for the region, environmentally and user friendly transportation, certification of tourism businesses with the Eco Tourism Award, building up of agriculture – tourism cooperation projects (partner businesses, Project Genussspechte (food-lover), development of the tourism partner businesses label, creation of a comprehensive range of visits and environmental education. Since the start of the project in 2000, the “Blickwinkel” ("Point of view") newsletter has been published and is available across the valley.