Protected areas, whether they are national parks, World Heritage Areas or other European or national government designations, create particular challenges. On one hand such natural and cultural resources are spectacular and offer a perfect resource for tourism development, yet on the other hand the resource merits particular protection and careful management from development. For some this protection of land in the national interest is at the expense of rural development, but for others it is an opportunity and a stimulus for sustainable rural development. The NEST project seeks to bring people together to network and to learn from each other to use their natural and cultural resources to best effect for the sustainable development of their area. All partner areas benefit from a high quality natural and cultural resource but are at different stages of awareness of this resource and approaches to its development. A key focus is the support and development of local and transnational networks of key stakeholders. From this base of collaborative working the project concentrates on protected areas as a source for identifying and realising business opportunities, promoting and investigating sustainable tourism management and quality marketing, and how educational nature school programmes can be developed using the partners shared geological heritage. Expected Results: · Reduced conflicts between different interest groups and the sharing of experience and information on how best to realise tourism potential within and between protected areas in the participating countries.· Best practice examples on networking, environmental education, park related business and quality labelling by collaborative working within and between participating countries.· Better understanding of the importance of sustainability for rural development in peripheries areas· Increased social capital in both trans-national and local networks when planning local and trans-national projects, including new approaches to joint agency and community working· New proposals for nature school procedures and international co-operation of nature schools, as well as international educational geo-trails· New park and protected nature - related economic products for tourism markets· Motivated transferable exhibition· Transferable models to evaluate tourism carrying capacity for decision makers· Extended tourist season and increased visitors diversity