The depopulation and abandonment of rural areas, with their environmental and social consequences, are a priority on the agenda of national and European governments. The CoVid emergency highlighted risks associated with population concentration in urban centres and urges a rethink of settlement patterns in a more decentralised way and made more visible the differences in welfare services between urban and mountain areas. The social, political and economic marginalisation of rural communities and the loss of their rich rural cultural and natural heritage and the resulting hydrogeological instability and fires make it essential to critically reflect on current and past approaches and provide new tools for planning a sustainable future for rural areas, especially in the light of future climate change scenarios, both in terms of territorial justice and fairness in the geographical distribution of services and opportunities as well as by an economic and environmental point of view, and, thus, a revitalised role of local communities. There is an urgent need to look at rural areas in their multiple and intimately connected dimensions well visible looking at the process of abandonment from an historical perspective and to scientifically compare different perspectives and procedures for their possible future planning considering and verifying their social, environmental and cultural effects. Present education and career paths are strongly disciplinary oriented and do not allow to build up the competencies and perspectives to reconstruct, recollect and rethink the links and interconnections between phenomena and areas of knowledge. CLOE addresses this challenge through an interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral DP developed by UniGe, in collaboration with a network of host academic and non-academic organisations. Combining historical, environmental and legal perspectives, CLOE adopts a multidisciplinary approach to mountain and rural sustainable development and conservation. The starting point is overcome the urban centred perspective connecting phenomena and processes through an historical understanding of the abandonment, and to contribute to plan a sustainable future. CLOE is designed to offer a distinctive approach to doctoral training and supervision. ESRs are following a rich training programme: common core courses, international workshops, visiting research periods abroad, and secondments in partner research centers. The 15 ESRs are working on 4 closely related topics: Mountain areas and heritagisation processes; Mountain conservation, cultural landscapes and conflicts; Coming back to the mountains; Mountain areas and environmental risks.Today’s education and career-development paths tend to prize a rigid disciplinary orientation. While cultivating a stable common ground to build career paths in both the public and private sector, such a unique training programme is a starting point for new and impactful interdisciplinary research on sustainable development, environmental and cultural conservation, considering historical dynamics which lead to present situation.The context of CLOE project are inland areas and their prospective to become attractive for young generations and innovative enterprises. The issues addressed are the co-existence of consolidated cultures and lifestyles with new technologies and approaches, in order to invert the current trend of depopulation of rural areas and avoid natural and social extreme events. It results extremely important for the society to reach a new equilibrium between cities’ human forced aggregation and underexploited countryside, where resources fade without political countermeasures and effective commitment. The idea of “community” is now pervading several topics, originating from social domain and extending towards energy and information management. The objective of the CLOE project is to reinforce an attitude characterizing UniGe, which stated Sustainability as main keyword of its Strategic Plan 21-26, as well as addressed the attention towards extreme events by establishing a Strategic Centre on Security Risk and Vulnerability, coupled with a homonymous PhD Course. CLOE ESRs benefit of residential PhD “conventional” course and profit of dedicated educational instances with the aim at becoming experts in the recovery and restoration of inland areas.
