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ALPINE CONVENTION | SUSTAINABLE TOURISM IN THE ALPS
an explosion in popularity in the 1930s (Rolland, 2006). In the latest decades, an increasingly differentiated tourist offer is interesting the whole Alps, with new sports and activities becoming more and more important (Bätzing, 2005). Since World War II, new forms of tourism have developed (e.g. spa-related tourism, ecotourism, cycling holidays, farm-holidays, wine-and-food-tourism etc.) due to new expectations of visitors, and this has led to a diversification of outdoor summer activities (e.g. mountain-biking, rockclimbing, canyoning, paragliding etc.). As far as the winter season is concerned, a similar phenomenon has occurred: facilities for Alpine skiing have continued to develop and also other sports such as cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, tobogganing, heli-skiing and snowboarding developed (SAB, 2010). Global human activities, tourist and non-tourist, have considerable influence on these winter and summer sports. Maybe one of the effects of climate change is that very likely a growing number of low-altitude Alpine ski resorts will partly no longer be able to offer sufficient snow cover throughout the winter season, even if they have the facilities to produce artificial snow (Angelini & Cetara, 2007; Bürki, 2003). In this sense, climate change effects are already having an impact on leisure and discovery activities (OECD, 2007 and 2008). Although climate change has harmful social, environmental and economic consequences (e.g. increased pressure on resources, increased infrastructural costs), it also opens up fresh potentials (e.g. development and diversification of non-snow-based activities and summer holidays). Mindful of changes in customers’ expectations and the need to improve the quality of their services, many Alpine regions have chosen to diversify their tourist activities, in particular by creating and making use of nature reserves. This type of investment is already proving profitable in both summer and winter.
Ski Areas: ski lifts, energy and artificial snowmaking Ski areas are confronted with quite specific requests of clients towards activity offers and infrastructures. This demand generated nevertheless different actions of ski-destinations in the second half of the 20th century. In general the client’s requests became more multilateral, meaning that today a ski tourist no longer skies from 6 to 8 hours a day but only 4 to 6 hours a day (Reynaud, FIANET, 2012). Additional activities are seen as complementary and not as substituting skiing. The costs for electricity for ski lift operation are about 8-10%
(other: 30-50% for salaries, and 10-20% maintenance of working material). These high payments trigger energy efficiency methods and in 2012 led to a model on good practices “Mountain in motion” which has been signed by numerous ski areas in France (Reynaud, FIANET, 2012). Even though ski areas do not always consider climate change as one of the main challenges because the time frame for the change is largely above the economic time (rentability of a ski-lift is around 20 years) artificial snowmaking is the most widespread adaptation measure to climate change in the Alps, due to the key-role of snow for Alpine winter tourism offer. Nevertheless, responses to the diminishing guaranteed snow cover of destinations at lower elevations also comprise diversification of offerings. For instance, a trend towards all-year tourism can be observed in some parts of the Alps. Due to its large demand of water and energy resources, artificial snowmaking is cost intensive although it seems to be profitable for most of the skiing areas. In the last two decades hundreds of millions of Euros have been invested into this technology, but thinking that all the slopes are equipped with artificial snowmaking facilities is a mistake. In 2004, 27% of the total skiable area in the Alps was covered by such facilities (CLIMCHALP Project); nowadays the total share is increased and the greater part of ski resorts are equipped with artificial snowmaking facilities in the most critical parts of the ski domain (e.g. 76.9% of resorts in Italy in 2007, whereas the 40% of the total skiable area was covered by such facilities in 2004, MATTM and EURAC research). Snowmaking has been and will be an important tool to deal with weather variability, partially compensating for the projected decline in natural snow (Scott & McBoyle, 2007). Operational costs depend on energy and water consumption and are linked to temperatures (higher temperatures entail greater consumptions and costs; OECD, 2007). Considering a seasonal energy consumptions of about 25,700 kW/ha (Conseil General de l’Environnement et du Developpement Durable, Badré, Prime, Ribière) and the Italian prices for energy in 2007 (medium final price of electric energy on the market, from the “Autorità per l’energia elettrica e il gas”, 2008), an annual cost of € 1,880 per ha could be estimated, resulting in an energetic cost of about € 45,000 per year in a medium ski domain (40 ha of which 24 equipped for artificial snowmaking, Regione Autonoma Valle d’Aosta, Società Meteorologica Subalpina). The costs of water ranges from € 284 to € 516 per ha/per year2, but nowadays only few ski areas buy water from the network (10% in France
ALPINE CONVENTION | SUSTAINABLE TOURISM IN THE ALPS
in 2007/2008, Marnezy, 2008), being more economically advantageous to build small private basins. Energy demand, water consumption and ecology as well impacts on landscape are the main externalities to be taken into account (Abbeg in: Weiermair et al., 2011). Energy consumption for artificial snowmaking is generally not extremely high, e.g. representing the 9% (16.4 GWh) of the domestic annual consumption of electricity in Valle d’Aosta (Regione Autonoma Valle d’Aosta, Società Meteorologica Subalpina, 2006). Water consumptions estimates are extremely different, ranging from 2,200 m3 per ha/per year (WWF, 2006) to 4,000 m3 (CIPRA, 2004; Marnezy & Rampnoux, 2006). These data clearly depend on the year taken into consideration, although there is a general agreement in considering a production of 2-2.5 m3 of snow for 1 m3 of water (Marnezy & Rampnoux, 2006). If on the one hand water consumption can be locally significant (i.e., in Davos/CH it represents 21.5% of total annual water consumption and in Scoul/CH the 36.2%; Abegg, 2011), on the other hand it must be said that the greater part of ski areas are creating private basins (which allow energy savings and do not influence water availability in periods of scarce flows and peak demand but have a major impact on landscape; Marnezy & Rampnoux, 2006) and that more than 2/3 of water comes back to the river basin with some weeks delay, whereas only the 30% is really “consumed”, being lost due to the evapo-transpiration (De Jong, 2007). Other impacts of artificial snowmaking to be considered depend on the snowmaking facilities as a whole (thus taking into account snow guns, reservoirs, withdrawals and
pumps, water piping and electric circuits, refrigeration and electric plants, warehouses etc.; APAT, 2007), and on the consideration of the impacts on slope soils (Wipf et al., 2005) and surrounding vegetation (OECD, 2007, p.48). Artificial snowmaking can be considered as an adaptation strategy in particular in a short-medium period, due to increasing temperatures forecasted and, consequently, also increasing costs and technical difficulties in mantaining snow. Other less resource-intensive technological measures to adapt, while maintaining a skiing-oriented strategy include: 1. slope design (landscaping) and grooming, in order to better take advantage of the topological characteristics of the ski area; 2. snow farming, which implies the creation of snow deposits; 3. concentration of ski areas at higher altitudes and glaciers and development of new cable-cars (Elsasser & Bürki, 2002). The latter is an extremely delicate issue given that: (a) the environment at higher altitudes is more fragile and the risk of natural hazards is greater; (b) the cost of investments and maintenance is higher and can increase the station indebtedness; (c) the impact on the landscape also increases (OECD, 2007). Other solutions for the adaptation of Alpine winter tourism to climate change could be founded in behavioural and cooperational strategies, risk-alleviating strategies, extreme strategies (Elsasser & Bürki, 2002; Elsasser & Messerli, 2001).
Examples of good practice Auditing in ski areas and ski stations Many stakeholders of the skiing industry (stations, private operators, ONG) care about improving their practices, for a better economic performance, to meet of their customers’ expectations and to preserve their environmental territory. Auditing their practices and their management is one of the numerous ways to achieve that. Some interesting experiences are on the way in the Alps, but they are relatively recent and require more time to analyse their real effectiveness.
Auditing in ski areas (FL) A broader approach is the eco-audit “Auditing in ski areas” of the foundation “pro natura – pro ski” in Liechtenstein. An award is given every second year to a ski area which is ready to implement activities improving their ski areas (e.g. preserving biotopes and habitats) and avoid its negative impact on environment. The process is firstly to do an environmental assessment, to develop an environmental program and an environmental management system to finally formulate an environment declaration. www.skiaudit.info/en/home.html
France Ski Areas: the charter of good practices (F) 2. Elaboration on Italian prices (Federutility, 2009) from data WWF (WWF ITALIA, Alpi e turismo: trovare il punto di equilibrio; Collana Ecoregione Alpi n°1, Milano, 2006) and Marnezy (MARNEZY ALAIN, Alpine dams: from hydroelectric power to artificial snow, In: Revue de Géographie Alpine, Mars 2008, Tome 96 n°1)
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The French ropeway society (France ski areas) is searching to implement good practices to control electric consumption of the tourist stations.