Socio-Environmental Conflicts in the European Mountain Areas: Insights from the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice
Scognamiglio, G., Nitschke, J., Bressan, G. (2025)
Abstract
Mountain regions are increasingly recognized as contested socio-ecological spaces where global development agendas, environmental concerns, and local livelihoods intersect. Although there is growing scholarly attention to mountain regions as sites of conflict, this remains largely fragmented and case study-based. This paper offers a systematic analysis of socio-environmental conflicts in European mountain regions, a term widely used in the literature to describe collective struggles over the use, control, and distribution of environmental resources and harms.
The analysis draws on 182 cases identified by combining the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas) with the European Environment Agency’s delineation of mountain areas. The study characterizes the main types, drivers, and actors involved and explores their spatial patterns in relation to land use, urbanization, and protected areas. Findings show a predominance of conflicts over energy production, water management, extraction, and waste, which often involve local communities opposing corporate actors.
These conflicts frequently centre on landscape degradation and the erosion of local identities, reflecting tensions between external resource demands and local territorial values. Geographically, significant clusters emerge in the Balkans, the Iberian Mountains, and the Carpathians, underscoring the need to move beyond the traditional Alpine focus of mountain research and the value of a broad spatial perspective.
Overall, the study highlights European mountains as both extractive and disposal frontiers, underscoring the importance of integrating environmental justice perspectives and local agency into mountain governance and territorial policy.
Keywords
european mountain areas, socio-environmental conflicts, ecological distribution conflicts, GIS, EJAtlas
Citation
Scognamiglio, G., Nitschke, J., Bressan, G. (2025). Socio-Environmental Conflicts in the European Mountain Areas: Insights from the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice. Journal of Alpine Research | Revue de géographie alpine, 113(2). DOI: 10.4000/15d2i.