The <a href="http://www.alpconv.org" target="_BLANK">Alpine Convention</a> is a binding contract under international law that was concluded in 1991 between the states bordering the Alpine region (an exception is Slovenia, which only joined the agreement two years later due to political upheavals). Essentially, it focusses on the cross-border development of the Alpine region in a number of defined sectors while protecting the natural environment. Within the Alpine Convention, there is a so-called implementation protocol for each of the defined sectors through which the planning of measures within the respective sector takes place. In total, there are currently (2018) almost ten implementation protocols, e.g., for tourism, mountain agriculture or nature conservation and landscape management. Each implementation protocol has to be ratified separately by the member states of the Alpine Convention. So far, not all member states have ratified all the implementation protocols. The decision-making body of the Alpine Convention is the so-called Alpine Conference which meets every two years on average. The chairmanship of the Alpine Convention also changes from one member state to another every two years. The permanent coordinating body of the Alpine Convention is the "Permanent Secretariat" with headquarters in Innsbruck and a branch office in Bolzano.<br>
The Alpine Convention is one of the official <a target="_BLANK" href="?db=172&amp;tk=172">Cooperation Partners of VerbaAlpina</a>. From a methodological point of view, the Alpine Convention is of particular importance for VerbaAlpina in that the geographical definition of the Alpine region made by the Alpine Convention and based on administrative boundaries ("<a target="_BLANK" href="?db=181&amp;tk=1237">Perimeter of the Alpine Convention</a>") has been adopted by VerbaAlpina and defined as the area of study. This technical-bureaucratic demarcation is unavoidable from a methodological point of view, even if it does not really do justice to the linguistic and cultural reality in many respects given the fluid transitions. As an example, the Emmental, located in Switzerland, is just outside the boundaries of the Alpine Convention and is therefore not taken into account by VerbaAlpina, although its dairy economy is very similar to the corresponding economic systems of the Alpine region. On the other hand, the area of the Alpine Convention, especially in the Bavarian Alpine foothills, extends far out into the plains and thus into regions that are far less comparable to the conditions in the mountainous area of the Alps than, for example, the Emmental.