Large-scale protected areas as instruments for transborder cooperation? Írottkő–Geschriebenstein Nature Park – a case study

Abstract

Transboundary Protected Areas can offer a bunch of opportunities for regional development in border regions. The range of possibilities reaches from measures of environmental protection to projects of local development and sustainability or even issues of attitudes and strategies for action aimed at neighbourhoods. From the experts’ point of view and according to current scholarly discourse they are considered to be promising and fruitful instruments of cross border cooperation.

With respect to national border regions, borders fulfil the functions of division, separation and connection. In the context of historical and political developments in the past decades, border regions – as the one along the Austro-Hungarian border – are interpreted as points of articulation due to the creative linkages between divided spaces that they have traditionally established. Linkages emphasise commonalities. A linkage provides access to a separated area, which can thus be entered or exited, providing opportunities for communication and exchange. The border areas of the case study which is analysed in this paper have also gradually come to be considered as spaces relatively open to at least some sort of new forms of use.

The Austro-Hungarian border region of Írottkő–Geschriebenstein, the easternmost transboundary segment of the Alpine area, represents such a potential space that has been designated for rapprochement in the context of regional policies of the European Union. Large scale protected areas like national parks, biosphere reserves and in particular nature parks, constitute suitable projects for cross border cooperation, especially if both sides of the border have already signaled their willingness to cooperate in principle.

The analysis in this article is mainly about a discussion of expectations and claims that those kinds of protected areas tend to prompt in the region. What are some of the unique aspects of transborder protected areas and which principles come into play and need to be taken into consideration in bilateral co-operations? The further analysis of the case study Írottkő- Geschriebenstein Nature Park is based on discussions around this topic held at the international level and complemented by a commentary on the results of a project carried out in this nature park within the framework of EU-regional policies. Its acronym “IGEN – Innovativ – Grenzüberschreitend – Einheitlich – Nachhaltig” (innovative – transboundary – unified – sustainable) clearly reflects its contents and components.

The case of this Transborder Protected Area at the interface of two contrary political systems serves to illustrate the following points: Firstly, how cross border cooperation and regional development progress in the context of regional governance as the policy principle. Secondly, which prerequisites need to be met in order to manage cooperation in cross border contexts by means of large-scale protected areas.