VISACA: Vision and Strategies in The Carpathian Area

VASICA (Vision and Strategies in the Carpathian Area) is a trans-national spatial development document and a key result of the EU CADSES Carpathian Project. Similar synthetic documents have been prepared for several large cooperation areas in Europe in the last decade. The fi rst and best known of these documents was the “Visions and Strategies around the Baltic Sea, (VASAB)”, prepared in 1994, constituting a source of inspiration in form and content. The Carpathians are Europe’s largest mountain range, shared by seven Central and Eastern European countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovak Republic and Ukraine. The diversity of the natural heritage is one of the biggest assets of the Carpathian region. The Carpathian area is a living environment inhabited by millions of people, but is subject to a variety of threats and adverse impacts from land abandonment, habitat conversion and fragmentation, deforestation, climate change, and large scale migration to industrialization, pollution, and exploitation of natural resources. The Carpathian Convention, signed in 2003 in Kyiv, enshrines a common vision, integrates developmental and environmental goals, provides objectives for action and constitutes the strategic framework for cooperation to address these challenges in a transnational context. It is calling for the development of coordinated spatial planning policies aiming at the protection and sustainable development of the Carpathians. The Carpathian Convention is, at present, the only multi-level governance mechanism covering the whole Carpathian area, allowing for cross-sector integration and broad stakeholder participation. No common regional development strategy has been prepared on the complex economic, environmental, social, and spatial problems of the Carpathian area. Therefore, the Carpathian Project had to face a pioneering task. VASICA deals with the specifi c development opportunities and problems of the Carpathian area and its mountainous regions. VASICA calls for the establishment of a support mechanism for the “Carpathian Space” in European Territorial Cooperation following the success of the Alpine Space; shifting this transnational area from the periphery to a region of sustainable development in the heart of Europe based on its exceptional cultural and natural heritage.