1Mountain regions occupy an important role in contemporary geographical and socio-ecological debates. Far from being considered marginal spaces, as has so often been the case in the past, mountains are now being represented and analysed as sets of contexts in which global processes are manifesting themselves with greater intensity, revealing contradictions, economic transformations and ecological vulnerabilities that challenge conventional economic development paradigms.
2The newly central role of mountain regions is reflected in the focus within academic research on global change. This phenomenon – and in particular its climate-related component – not only represents one of the most obvious manifestations of the crisis of the capitalist development model, but is also profoundly affecting mountain ecosystems (Marston, 2008; Knight, 2022) and transforming hydrological regimes, agricultural practices, forestry supply chains and human mobilities (Palomo, 2017; Chakraborty, 2021).
3The acceleration of these global changes is generating environmental pressures that intersect with the different historical processes that have taken place in mountain regions, interacting both with the processes of marginalisation that have affected vast areas due to their internal position or distance from major markets, and with the more enduring processes of economic development produced by agriculture and tourism in many mountain spaces (Adler et al., 2022). The emergence of phenomena such as the search for high-altitude “climate refuges” and the resulting real estate transformation in alpine territories (Perlik, 2011) clearly shows how mountains are becoming spaces of projection for new mobilities, new forms of investment, and settlement pressures.
4These changes are also reflected in the increase in flows related to tourism and the emergence of new qualitative models of travel, which in mountain areas often respond to the desire for a slower pace, authenticity and nature.
5These transformations are compounded by the expansion of the extraction of local value, which is often carried out by global value chains and linked to the transition towards new models of consumption and production, including in relation to mining, energy production and construction of the transport and communication infrastructure typical of the third millennium. These and other processes are redefining the relations between mountain territories and global dynamics, intensifying tensions and conflicts over decision-making processes and over how resources are accessed and used.
6Within this broad framework, this thematic issue focuses on the conflict between economy and ecology, understood as a valuable interpretive lens through which to observe, via a cross-section of the numerous phenomena taking place, the combination of economic, ecological and political forces that permeate mountain areas.
7Three key areas of interpretative focus emerge from the contributions to this thematic issue on the conflict between ecology and economy: conflicts over land use, often produced by global extractive logics; local mobilisations and the resignification of common goods; and the clash between old and new forms of production.
8Conflicts over land use decisions have notably made it possible to analyse how public decisions about the launch of new productive activities or the functional transformation of territories alter patterns of access to resources, and how these resources are distributed (Overvåg et al., 2016; Dax et al., 2021).
9Conflict constitutes a useful device for discussing the strenght of democracy, the distribution of environmental costs and the legitimacy of decision-making processes. This is the approach taken in the article by Giorgia Bressan, Jakob Nitschke and Giorgia Scognamiglio, which offers a comparative reading of environmental conflicts in European mountain areas based on the data held by the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJ Atlas). Their work provides a conceptual foundation for the issue as a whole, by offering an interpretive framework that allows conflicts to be understood not as isolated episodes, but as the outcomes of long-term economic, institutional and material trajectories.
10The contribution by Ilinca-Valentina Stoica, Daniela Zamfir, Athanasios-Alexandru Gavrilidis and Marie Houdart focuses on the example of Roșia Montană in Romania to describe a conflict highly representative of the power imbalances and procedural injustices that may be produced in mountain areas. This case study epitomises the way in which the logics of global extractivism have intersected with the legacy of the socialist apparatus. Here, however, the conflict has enabled Carpathian communities to resist territorial, economic and environmental transformations through forms of mobilisation, protest and reinterpretation of common goods.The article by Gabriele Orlandi complements this with an analysis of the conflicts generated by new forms of immaterial infrastructure and the way in which they reconfigure mountain practices, perceptions and imaginaries. The construction of a data centre in the Val di Non, one of the best-known valleys in the Dolomites, is the focus of an original ethnographic analysis that shows how this development, like all forms of infrastructure, is a powerful device capable of radically reshaping development imaginaries and generating local conflicts over the management of resources and over the productive and cultural identity of the region. Through this case study, the paper shows how global extractive logics are attempting to redefine mountain economies by introducing new forms of production, including those linked to the ecological transition. These range from mining to solar parks, logistics infrastructure and new forms of tourist pressure.
11Osvaldo Sironi, Facundo Rojas, Diego Bombal and Fernando Ruiz Peyré draw on a case study from Southern Mendoza in Argentina to show how mining economies produce cycles of dependency and vulnerability for local communities in line with the phases of expansion or abandonment of the activity. Their paper makes explicit the immense structural violence that mining can do to natural resources and to the communities that depend on them.
12The article by Chiara Braucher and Hernan Bianchi-Benguria also concerns mining, but broadens out the discussion to a central theme in the contemporary economy: the impact of the “green” transition and of the forms of extractivism linked to the critical minerals required for decarbonisation. Their contribution demonstrates how these processes can generate distortions and forms of environmental injustice that verge on the violation of human rights. The issue of the “just transition” therefore intersects with the dilemmas posed by “green” industrial policies that, while pursuing climate objectives, may have a significant impact on landscapes, ecosystems and local communities (Ciplets & Harrison, 2020).
13The contribution by Silvia Grandi and Myriam Zanchi explores forms of cross-border and shared governance of resources, and in particular water, by analysing “water grabbing”: a phenomenon typically associated with case studies in the Global South, but here examined in the context of the Alpine and pre-Alpine regions of Europe, in the border area between Ticino in Switzerland and Lombardy in Italy. Although non-violent and with limited visible manifestations, the ways in which this resource is controlled within this territory represent an example of a power imbalance based on geographical position, and show how water management in cross-border contexts makes apparent the tensions between institutions, territorial uses and models of cooperation.
14The issue concludes with an article looking at instruments for the management of common goods, based on a case study from the Italian Apennine mountains. Annalisa Spalazzi uses an ethnographic and participant observation approach to explore the relationship between collective ownership and forms of territorialisation. She reveals how certain modes of organisation, even if traditional in nature, can still perform the role of territorial collective care, making it possible to maintain community life trajectories and the shared management of resources.
15The overall picture that emerges from the case studies examined in this thematic issue is that of a profound process of transformation brought about by capitalism in mountain areas, intersecting with forms of resistance, practices of ecological care and local experiments that in some cases are challenging the dominant narratives of sustainable development.
16This thematic issue therefore invites us to think of mountains as intensely political spaces in which economy, nature and society confront and mutually redefine one another. Mountains are no longer simply territories observed for their ecological vulnerabilities, but places through which to understand the crises of the present and to imagine more just socio-ecological futures, in which conflict, care and transformation coexist as essential dimensions of contemporary territorial dynamics.