Contribution short abstract:

The presentation addresses how two mountain communities in the Slovenian Alps perceive environmental changes at different temporal and spatial scales, and how they make, remake, and unmake environmental relationships, which help them in coping with these changes.

Contribution long abstract:

This presentation explores the perceptions of environmental change among the locals, especially, transhumant pastoralists, in two distinct Alpine communities in Slovenia: Bohinj and Solčava. Both localities have traditionally relied on pastoralism, albeit in very different forms of farming, grazing practises and relationships with the environment. The presentation addresses how the locals perceive environmental changes at different temporal and spatial scales and how they make, remake, and unmake environmental relationships. Environmental relationships, which involve relationships between humans, animals, plants, forests, mountains, pastures, weather, and other environmental attributes are continuously in the making. Changes seem to be accelerating and can be attributed to diverse factors, such as climate changes (e.g. floods, droughts, snow patterns, extensions of pastoral seasons), conservation practices (e.g. reintroduction of wolfes and other wildlife), impact of tourism, or local practices. Such approach also aims to unwrite the understanding of mountain communities as stable, unchanging and detached from global processes. Instead, it will argue that local environmental knowledge, skills, or habituated practices serve to constitute affordances for the development of new practices, thus providing possibilities for imagining futures and coping with the changing world.