Europes ecological backbone.pdf

Mountain people: status and trends
Box 2.1 Population shifts in the mountains of Greece (cont.)
Table 2.5 Population fluctuations in Greece, 1951–2001
Year 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001
Population
Semi mountainous areas 1 341 850
1 781 689 2 085 961 2 236 351 2 318 717
(total Greece)
No
Mountainous areas
1 069 470 1 047 894 941 586 939 843 935 585
available
(total Greece)
data
% of national population
14 12 10 9 9
in mountainous areas
Depopulation of mountain regions continued throughout the 1980s (1981–1991), though at a lower
rate. Populations have increased from 1991 to 2001 (Matsouka and Adamakopoulos, 2007), mainly
due to internal migration and a growing interest in mountain areas. People have seemed to rediscover
mountains, attracted by their unspoiled nature and the quality of life they offer. Tourism has been linked
to the restoration of old buildings and the construction of new ones in mountain villages. During the last
decade, a significant number of migrants (7 % of the total Greek population) moved to the mountainous
regions, forming a population injection for many depopulated villages. Job opportunities in building, road
construction and cattle-breeding keep immigrants in the mountains, preventing many schools from closing
down and revitalising the villages.
Source:
Dimitris Kaliampakos and Stella Giannakopoulou (National Technical University of Athens, Greece).
Mediterranean islands, Iberian mountains and
Pyrenees. Overall, the net changes in population
density for the entire period 1990–2005 varied
considerably between the massifs.
Changes in population density were not only
different between the different massifs but there
were also differences by country within the same
massif (Table 2.7). At the national level, there
is a consistently increasing trend in mountain
population density in s is the British Isles, the
Pyrenees, the eastern Mediterranean islands and
Central European middle mountains 1. However,
for the other massifs, trends varied between
countries. In the Balkans/South-east Europe,
densities increased considerably in Croatia and the
former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, decreased
considerably in Albania, Bulgaria and Romania,
and changed little in Greece and Slovenia. In the
Carpathians, densities decreased except in Poland
and Slovakia. In Poland and Slovakia, this reflects
the fact that the mountain area as defined for this
report includes basins between mountains where the
populations of smaller towns and cities increased,
whereas, the population density in the other
mountains of Poland (Central European middle
mountains 2) decreased. A comparable pattern
is evident for Germany, where the density in the
middle mountains decreased, but the density in
the Alps increased. Similarly population densities
in the Italian Alps increased in contrast to a
decreasing trend in other parts of Italy including the
Apennines and Sardinia (western Mediterranean
islands). Densities increased in all French and
Spanish mountains, the two other countries whose
mountains are divided between a number of
massifs.
A key issue here is the extent to which the changes
in massifs, and parts of massifs, reflect national
trends. To help resolve this question, population
density changes inside and outside the mountain
massifs per country are shown in Table 2.8. In
general, the trends in population density observed
in the mountains are consistent with the trends
observed in the rest of the country. However, in
Switzerland, Finland, Poland, Portugal, Serbia,
Sweden and Slovenia the trends in mountain
areas are the opposite of those in the rest of their
respective countries. The population density
increased outside the mountains and decreased
inside the sparsely-populated mountains of
Finland and Sweden; a similar pattern was shown
in Portugal and Italy, but the changes are smaller.
40 Europe's ecological backbone: recognising the true value of our mountains