Actors, Institutions and Attitudes to Rural Development: the Swiss
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The Nature of Rural Development: Towards a Sustainable Integrated Rural Policy in Europe Raimund Rodewald in collaboration wth Peter Knoepfel Actors, Institutions and Attitudes to Rural Development: The Swiss National Report Research Report to the World-Wide Fund for Nature and Statutory Countryside Agencies of Great Britain Institut de Hautes Etudes en Administration Publique (idheap) December 2000 Contents Introduction 2 1. Rural Switzerland 5 1.1. How land use in Switzerland has changed 5 1.2. Definition of Rural Areas 7 2. The Institutional and Political Environment 9 2.1. The main actors and their role in the rural areas 9 2.1.1. Federal authorities 9 2.1.2. National public-law institutions 10 2.1.3. Independent state companies and federal public limited companies 10 2.1.4. National private-law institutions 10 2.1.5. Cantonal, regional and local authority bodies and institutions 10 2.2. The main programmes and policies for rural areas 11 2.2.1. Regional policy in the strict sense 11 2.2.2. Federal agricultural policy 17 2.2.3. Other federal laws and policies with implications for rural areas 17 2.2.4. The inter-policy problems 19 3. Overview of the Actors and their Relationships in Rural Areas 21 4. Analysis of the Current Situation in Rural Areas 22 4.1. Methods and approach 22 4.2. Rural areas - more than a question of definition 22 4.3. The difficulties facing rural areas and actor constellations 23 4.4. Who decides what happens in rural areas? 29 5. The Challenges Facing Sustainable Rural Development 33 5.1. The main challenges facing rural areas in the present and future 33 5.2. The concept and aims of sustainable rural development 35 6. On the Road to Sustainable Rural Development 38 6.1. Summary of the strengths and weaknesses of Swiss regional policy 38 6.2. Regional policy in Switzerland today and potential improvements with respect to sustainability 40 6.3. From the mountain regions policy to a comprehensive regional policy 44 7. Results of the Workshop of 19 September 2000 46 References 48 Annex 1: The Main Actors and their Roles in Rural Areas 50 Annex 2: Other Federal Laws with Implications for Rural Areas (from Chapter 2) 62 Annex 3: List of interviewees 67 Annex 4: Questionnaire 68 Annex 5: Translations of the Names of the Authorities, Organisations, Laws and Acronyms referred to in the Text 70 Professor Peter Knoepfel IDHEAP Route de la Maladiere 21 1022 Chavannes-pres-Renens University of Lausanne Switzerland Tel: (+41) 21 694 06 40 Fax: (+41) 21 694 0609 E-mail: [email protected] Raimund Rodewald Swiss Foundation for Protection of the Landscape Hirschengraben 11 CH-3011 Bern Switzerland Tel. (+41) 31 312 20 01 Fax (+41) 31 312 57 81 E-mail: [email protected] 1 Introduction Against the background of the new European Union policy in the area of rural development, in spring 2000, the WWF International launched a research project involving ten countries and aimed at defining principles for sustainable development policy for rural areas. WWF International describes the background, object and method of this project “The nature of rural development: towards a sustainable integrated rural policy in Europe – a collaborative action-research project for the Worldwilde Fund for Nature (WWF)” as follows: Background The 1990s saw a series of incremental steps to reform rural and agricultural policies in Europe, including changes to the Common Agricultural Policy and the Structural Funds of the European Union (EU). However, there remain widespread concerns about the limited scope of policy reform and the continued difficulties in resolving the serious economic, social and environmental problems experienced in Europe’s rural areas. Further reforms are inevitable in the coming years, particularly given pressures from world trade negotiations and from the changing relationships between Central and Eastern European countries and the EU. There is therefore an urgent need to develop new ways of promoting sustainable rural development in Europe that meets social, economic and environmental objectives in an integrated way. The Research Project To meet this challenge, WWF has commissioned a major research project called ‘The Nature of Rural Development’ to run over a 3-year period. The Project is organised in three parts. First, a Scoping Phase (‘Actors and Institutions’) is underway from May – December 2000 to map and analyse the institutional structures and different understandings of rural development issues. Second, Phase I (‘Learning from Examples’) will be carried out during 2001 to develop detailed local case studies of rural development in order to identify the ingredients of, and constraints upon, success. Finally, Phase II (‘Shaping Future Policies Together’) will develop working recommendations for the promotion of sustainable rural development in Europe. The Scoping Phase of the project involves a consortium of researchers in 10 participating countries. These are: Austria; France; Germany; Hungary; Latvia; Poland; Spain; Sweden; Switzerland; UK. The Scoping Phase is being co-ordinated by David Baldock and Janet Dwyer (Institute for European Environmental Policy [IEEP], London) with Philip Lowe and Neil Ward, Centre for Rural Economy [CRE], University of Newcastle upon Tyne). Methodology In each participating country, a national researcher is working with a WWF national officer to identify the main organisations and institutions with an interest in rural development issues. Key actors are being interviewed using semi-structured personal interviews and telephone interviews during May, June & July 2000. A national workshop will be held in each participating country in September 2000. At the workshops, a draft national report of research findings will be discussed 2 amongst a grouping of the key national actors involved in rural development issues. IEEP and CRE will produce a comparative report, which analyses the over-arching findings from the 10 participating countries, and compares and contrasts the various institutional structures and attitudes towards rural development issues. The comparative report will form the basis of a major seminar in Brussels in November 2000.” In Switzerland, this project is being carried out by the Research and Instruction Unit: Public Policy/Environment at the IDHEAP (Director: Professor Dr Peter Knoepfel). Our country represents something of an exception in that it has never had a specific policy for rural areas and will not be obliged to develop one in the future under the new EU policy. The IDHEAP made the following observations on this in an introductory text: The term “rural development” does not really exist in Swiss federal and cantonal policies. Normally, we use the term of “regional economic development policies” (“regionale Wirtschaftspolitik”, Regionalpolitik). Under this (rather narrow) policy we find all kinds of federal and cantonal grants/subsidies for State run public infrastructure and private economic activities (in the field of agriculture, forestry, tourism, the foundation of new small enterprises, etc.). But this is rather an economic development policy which certainly has environmental impacts which are studied, today, mainly within the frame of local agenda programs (slightly granted by the federal office of the environment, forests and landscape). When enlarging the scope of observation into the direction of policies which in some way affect the rural environmental quality we certainly must add the following public policies run by the federal State: • agriculture policy (direct payments limited to ecologically sound agriculture like integrated production or biological production in the field of animal and vegetal agriculture); • forestry policies (recently reoriented towards ecologically sound forestry); • all kinds of infrastructural supply policies, such as national highway construction, high voltage electricity lines, airports, hydroelectric power plants, railways, large touristic infrastructural facilities, such as golf-links, skiing equipment, open air sports activities, etc.); • transportation policies; • tourism policies (mainly mountainous tourism, especially winter tourism, golf); • landuse policies (especially: urbanisation, transformation of the agricultural soil by its opening-up to constructions for small enterprises); • federal national nature protection policies; • general environmental policies. Despite this, the IDHEAP elected to carry out this study because its directors firmly believe that rural areas in Switzerland will need integrated regional policies in future. Due to the existing combination of policies, references to rural areas in this report very often concern mountain regions. This should not conceal the fact that the sustainability 3 postulate is relevant not only to mountain regions but also, in particular, to the peri-urban areas in Central Switzerland which are at risk from expansive urbanisation processes, and for which few special policies have been developed to date. Hence, in accordance with the instructions given, the report reflects the current status of public policies in rural Switzerland and also suggests that the (remaining) rural areas in Central Switzerland be taken into account by these policies in the future. The IDHEAP commissioned Dr. phil. Biol. Raimund Rodewald to carry out this study. Dr Rodewald is well known as the director of the Swiss Foundation for the Protection of the Landscape (Stiftung Landschaftsschutz Schweiz), an organisation established for the protection of rural areas. Thus, he