Regional Mountain Conference

Alpine agriculture faces mounting pressures from climate change, market volatility, and demographic shifts. This paper examines the challenges and factors that shape the transformative impact of transdisciplinary research on climate futures and how scientific evidence can be prepared and communicated so that stakeholders actively use it. We focus on actors across value chains and governance: mountain farmers and pastoralists, cooperatives, advisory services and chambers, tourism enterprises, NGOs, research institutions, and municipal/regional authorities.

Key challenges include science skepticism and politicized problem framings, institutional path dependencies and fragmented mandates, limited access to finance and advisory services, and unequal power relations. Stakeholders often weigh scientific findings strategically and accept or reject them selectively according to organizational agendas; the politicization of climate issues serves competitive positioning. A gender lens reveals persistent inequalities: women are underrepresented in decision-making bodies, less likely to hold land titles and mandates, and frequently perform invisible support work; at the same time, women-led initiatives demonstrably enhance innovation and adaptive capacity when resources, training, and voice are secured.

We argue that research acceptance depends less on “hard evidence” alone than on credibility, salience, and legitimacy: co-produced scenarios, transparent uncertainty communication, demonstration farms, boundary organizations, and fair benefit-sharing increase the likelihood of uptake. From a political science perspective, bottom-up participation led by public bodies can falter without adequate power rebalancing when well-organized, conservative interests block adaptation decisions. We conclude by outlining governance designs that integrate climate, agricultural, and gender policy: binding participation formats with quotas for underrepresented groups, adaptation-effective funding instruments, and accountability mechanisms that prioritize long-term resilience and gender equality in the Alpine region. Consequently, new alliances are required to actively address climate change and related challenges (e.g., water scarcity, biodiversity loss) in agriculture—crossing sectoral boundaries, sharing responsibility, and coordinating investment.