Tourism & Biodiversity in Marittime Mercantour : why it's going to work out! Florent FAVIER Communication officer National Parc of Mercantour Sarah de Caqueray Camping - Mercantour Fabrizzio Fenocchio Camping - Alpi Marittime
Tourism & Biodiversity in Marittime Mercantour : why it's going to work out! Florent FAVIER Communication officer National Parc of Mercantour Sarah de Caqueray Camping - Mercantour Fabrizzio Fenocchio Camping - Alpi Marittime I have the privilege to present here the particular experience between the Mercantour national park & the Alpi Marittime natural park and explain to this audience why together, as transboundary partners, we believe that tourism & biodiversity are the best opportunity to enhance our territory... Let me thanks all the persons & institution that allow us to be present here, the Europarc Federation and of Course our guest, M. Gaston Franco, our european deputy and mayor of St Martin Vésubie in the Mercantour national Park!
First you have to know that Mercantour & Alpi Marittime are twinned since 1987. We have a long experience of transboundary projects, that leaded us to create, in april of this yea 2013, the first European natural park by the creation of a GECT tool.
As a consequence, we also learned in april that France and Italy both made the inscription on their indicative list for the UNESCO program.
To come back to european charter, let's remember that with the Parco Alpi Marittime we share the same goals : Alpi Marittime is involved in the charter since 2001, the Mercantour since 2006 and each other we renewed our candidature together by a common strategy in 2011 the next step may be a single candidature
This single charter strategy engaged us to reealise operationnal improvement in our actions : - a strong leadership on ecotourism in our territory - a transboundary network - creation of 2 association of people involved in tourism : Ecoturismi in Marittime & Mercantour Ecotourisme. - support of initiatives from the territory as the twinning betwin St Martin Vesubie & Entraque, which gives sense and consistence to our action
To understand why ecotourism is the solution in our territory, I first have to explain what we want to do. Today, as most of protected areas, our common strategy with Alpi Marittime is to propose an unusual experience to the visitors.
An experience that has to be shared in every way the nature offers it and in every emotion it makes us feel. Emotions is the best vehicle for memory, above all if it's positive...
Thes emotions can be shared with inhabitants & professionals, i mean people who try to live there (maintain themselves) by receiving tourists in a different way.
This experience has also to connect people to the nature, and explain the deep + old links between us and our environment...
This experience is also the good meaning to explain our landscapes and their influence on the particular & astonnishing surroundings of the Mercantour-Alpi Marittime region, our specific biodiversity, culture and traditions.
And as a matter of fact this experience is also a real unique opportunity to create links with our culture which is disappearing, in certain cases, far more quickly and obviously than nature...
In fact ecotourism in Marittime-Mercantour is the perfect solution to create LINK : with nature, with culture, with tradition, with people and across generations. But above all, let me tell you why ecotourism is, to our point of view, the right solution to manage in both hands ecotourism development and biodiversity protection in our parks.
First of all : our geographic position : we are the last step of the alps before Mediterranean sea. Our transboundary massive is the same mountain, each one of us is a face of the same coin...
We art unique because we manage mountains that crowl into the sea, in the Riviera in Italy & Côte d'azur in France...
Marittime & Mercantour share, beside geographics, share common history, mostly around boundary...
Here is the old boudary between Kingdom of France and County of Nice, which was part of the Dukes of Savoie (here it's 1761).
Another thing we share is a rich biodiversity that explains why the biggest inventory in the worl on that biodiversity, the 2nd of this kind, took place on our territory.
In only 6 years, about 300 scientists engaged inventories ; that took our knowledge of our biodiversity from around 3000 different living species up to more than 8000 today
For all these reasons, and some more, we believe that this territory is ready to grow its ecotourism attraction. But without people ready to get involved in this challenge, we won't do anything.. So it's an honour for me to welcom Sarah de Caqueray from St Martin Vésubie and Fabrizzion Fenocchio from Entraque, who represent also the coherence of the twinning of these two villages and will present the sense that can be given to both institutionnal initiatives (parks & villages).