“There is only a climate change if it is also an eco-social change”

Christina Jaritsch (29) is interested in spaces in between, especially those between town and country. “This rural, this mixture of urban and rural, of rural and urban elements, is the great potential in the Salzkammergut”, says the woman from Ebensee. In 2019 she completed her master’s degree in political science at the University of Vienna with a thesis on the emigration of women from rural areas.

After studying in Nancy, Havana and Vienna, she returned to her home town. Not least in order for the Capital of Culture “Salzkammergut 2024” to curate the areas of ecology, agriculture and social affairs. “I am responsible for the green topics: ecology, climate change, climate change and politics, transdisciplinary future strategies, tomorrow’s agriculture, but also social topics such as diversity. For me this is not a contradiction, but one. There is only a climate change if it is also an eco-social change.”

Like this loads “Water is the gold of the future – the slightly different climate conference” for discussion: “It is not a conventional, face-to-face conference format. You can book experts for a certain period of time and ask them your own questions.” The conference is embedded in the exhibition “Salt.Lake.City” in Bad Ischl on the climate-relevant topics of salt, water and wood. The project is dedicated to the perspectives of smallholder agriculture “Ox heart and lavender”: “It’s all about creative, innovative ways of developing small and micro-agriculture. We live in the Salzkammergut in a cultural landscape. Without mountain women and small farmers, the landscape that tourism ‘sells’ would not exist in this form. However, the appreciation is not sufficient, ideally and financially. It is about how farming can become so attractive that young people have an incentive to become active in agriculture”says Jaritsch, who herself has completed an apprenticeship as a skilled agricultural worker and actively uses her knowledge in her parents’ business in Ebensee.

She also oversees two garden projects, including the “Garden of Healing Powers” with the HLW (Higher Schools for Business Professions) in Bad Ischl. “Together with the students and experts, a lawn that is currently a biodiverse fallow land will be transformed into a school garden.” The project “Snag” is reminiscent of the weaving and spinning mill in Ebensee, which was closed in 1992 and employed up to 600 people. “mostly women. There was a social network, childcare and a small farm for self-sufficiency. But there were still gender hierarchies, the foremen were mostly men”says Jaritsch, who is particularly interested in a social project: “Salzkammerqueer” – “the first queer community building project in rural areas with the goal of exploring the queer community and giving people the opportunity to dock. For me, this is a project for tolerance, respect, recognition and appreciation of the diversity of identities, which is also met with great international interest.”

There are inquiries from Chemnitz, the European Capital of Culture 2025. “To create this open, creative rural space that opens up internationally, is permeable in all directions, is diverse and reinvents itself in this diversity” she wishes – not only for “Salzkammergut 2024”.