All Icalpe’s activities are oriented towards the research of solutions for the sustainable development of marginal areas in Europe and the Mediterranean: mountainous, insular and Mediterranean regions in general, and other regions sharing particular handicaps.

Icalpe’s activities are principally distributed in three main types of activities:

• assistance to the submission and implementation of European cooperation projects,
• studies and consultancy in an international context,
• assistance to the design and implementation of concrete local development projects.

Cooperation activities include transnational, interregional and transboundary cooperation projects, in which local and regional entities work together to find solutions to common problems.

Studies and consultancy activities correspond to experts missions and deliver often mission or studies reports, forms to feed data-base, notes, papers and other synthesis documents.

Activities to provide assistance to concrete local development projects have been carried out principally in Corsica, so far, not excluding other application areas in the future.

All these activities are closely linked. Cooperation allows to find out solutions that serve as illustrations and reference to expertise missions and are tested in local development projects. The latter allow Icalpe, in return to dispose of a detailed knowledge of the practical problems encountered in the concrete implementation of solutions, which reinforces its capacity to provide expertise in studies and consultancy works. The latter make the most of the acquired experience in cooperation and at local level, and in return provide Icalpe with new references in a wide European and Mediterranean frame, enriching its capacity to deliver ideas and solutions in local and cooperation projects, etc.