The focus of the ANR proposal is to launch a network joining European and non-European teams working on local development in the highlands, in order to submit a proposal to RISE (Research and Innovation Staff Exchange) Marie Curie Program/H2020 early 2017. The objectives of the RISE proposal will be (i) share and debate the diverse initiatives and innovations of local development in the highlands, (ii) develop specific capacity building focused on different types of stakeholders and local people, (iii) participate in policymaking through relevant suggestions, monitoring and assessment of actions and (iv) strengthen a recognized European competence on the local development in the highlands. The partnership for the ANR proposal, and consequently for the RISE proposal, is based four countries of European Union (Austria, France, Portugal and United Kingdom), two other European countries (Norway and Switzerland) and non-European countries in Mediterranean (Morocco and Lebanon), the Americas (Argentina, Canada, Equator, Peru, the United States) and Eastern Asia (China and Vietnam). Research question is adaptation process and resilience of high mountain societies to global change, especially initiatives and innovations focused on local development. Several initiatives of local development in the highlands were implemented in the countries of the European Union, although the concepts have sometimes been built in other areas, as for example natural parks, reserves of biodiversity, reserves of biosphere, “regional” parks, winter and summer slow tourism, many small agribusiness factories for cheeses, liquors, fruits, etc. Diverse reasons justified these implementations in the European Union, especially the specific policies made at national and European level, which strongly incentivized and supported these initiatives, in order to reduce the disadvantages of these regions, mainly due to their weak access and their long distance to decisions centers. Indeed, focused on the sustainable development, the specific national and European policies significantly impacted local development in European highlands, compared with non-European highlands where economic issues and national interest usually lead their development, especially in developing countries. Moreover, the supportive context for local development initiatives lead to new initiatives and also innovations focused on the improvement of these initiatives and the building of new initiatives, including in policymaking. In other words, based on the European Union experience, the implementation of local development could lead to new steps of local development. It is a research hypothesis to be verified in European Union and tested in the other zones. A priori, for the method of the RISE proposal, we suggest using the concept of co-viability, which includes both viability and its regulation, to analyze resilience factors at different scales, representations and local knowledge, access to resources and policymaking in global change context. This point has to be debate with the partner in the next months. In terms of activity to be developed in 2016 in order to build the RISE proposal, firstly there are five visits to each of the European partners in order to better share the common objectives of the RISE proposal, select the local development initiatives for the compare analysis and draft a concept note of the RISE proposal. Secondly, a workshop joining the leaders of European partners with 3-4 leaders of non-European teams will allow to better define the contents of the proposal and to draft a first version.