Cultural landscapes in Austria are multifunctional through their simultaneous support of productive, habitat, regulatory, social, and economic functions. This study investigates, if changing climatic conditions in Austria will lead to landscape change. Based on the assumption that farmers are the crucial decision makers when it comes to the implementation of agricultural climate change policies, this study analyzes farmers’ decision-making under the consideration of potential future climate change scenarios and risk, varying economic conditions, and different policy regimes through a discrete choice experiment. Results show that if a warming climate will offer new opportunities to increase income, either through expansion of cash crop cultivation or new land use options such as short-term rotation forestry, these opportunities will almost always be seized. Even if high environmental premiums were offered to maintain current cultural landscapes, only 43 % of farmers would prefer the existing grassland cultivation. Therefore, the continuity of characteristic Austrian landscape patterns seems unlikely. In conclusion, despite governmental regulations of and incentives for agriculture, climate change will have significant effects on traditional landscapes. Any opportunities for crop intensification will be embraced, which will ultimately impact ecosystem services, tourism opportunities, and biodiversity.

Participative planning approaches are vital to sustainable development in rural areas. However, stakeholder involvement also faces many barriers. In this Danube region case study, barriers to stakeholder involvement across eight rural regions are investigated. With the standardized conditions provided through an ERDF and IPA funded EU project, special attention could be paid to socio-cultural barriers, specifically concerning perception of sustainability and conflicts of interest. The effects of these barriers to the planning process are seen in the comparison of awareness concerning overall goals, indicators and the regional self-assessments. The implications for planning and management in rural tourism areas find that the perception of sustainability varies greatly, perceived deficiencies increase awareness and that crucial indicators need to be understood by stakeholders beginning a participative planning approach.

Although the consideration of alternatives is seen as a core element of impact assessments (IA) such as environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and strategic environmental assessments (SEAs), there are few scientific papers that have addressed this topic in depth based on a large empirical study. These studies, as well as the last evaluation of the application of the SEA Directive by the EC, have concluded that there is need for improvement regarding the consideration of alternatives. This paper presents a large quantitative appraisal of the consideration of alternatives in current EIA and SEA practice in Austria. Through a criteria-based evaluation of 100 environmental impact statements (EIAs) and 71 environmental reports (SEA), a quantitative and partly qualitative review was undertaken. The criteria embrace the aspects of “types of alternatives”, “combination of alternatives”, “environmental relevance”, “presentation/structure”, as well as the “consideration of the zero-alternative”. The deficiencies that were identified empirically point out the need for improvement. In particular, a strong need for improvement was identified for both instruments regarding the low environmental relevance of the alternative assessment that was presented, as well as the lack of linking the zero variant to the future development of the environmental issues.

The paper analyses the effectiveness of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) in sensitive alpine environments by studying processes and selected case studies in Austria and Germany. The framework used to evaluate the respective effectiveness is based on four dimensions of effectiveness: procedural, substantive, transactive and normative. The study is based on semi-structured interviews, workshops with key stakeholders and textual analysis of EIA documents, as well as the analysis of legal documents. The findings reveal significant differences between the two countries leading to lower transactive and lower normative effectiveness in Austria. The framework demonstrates its high suitability for analysing EIA effectiveness and for developing recommendations. The outcomes also underline the significant influence of the project type.