Third Global Meeting of the Mountain Partnership

The third Global Meeting of the Mountain Partnership took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Tuesday, 19 June 2012, on the sidelines of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development Rio+20 summit.

The three-hour event attracted over 70 representatives of governments, IGOs and NGOs, who met in the auditorium of the Mountain Pavilion, set up at the Athletes’ Park in the city.

The meeting began with a video message by renowned mountaineer and first Mountain Partnership ambassador Reinhold Messner.

Held eight years after the Second Global Meeting in Cusco (Peru) in 2004, some members found the meeting historic, in light of the momentum generated by the sustainable development talks at Rio+20 on the future we want.

“Three paragraphs on mountains now form part of the [Rio+20] outcome document, and that is largely our collective achievement as members of this Partnership,” said Ambassador Gyan Chandra Acharya, the Permanent Representative of Nepal to the United Nations, in his keynote speech.

The second part of the meeting, moderated by Marco Onida, Secretary General of the Alpine Convention, presented testimonials on the work carried out by members during the first ten years of the Partnership. “Through this Partnership we are making our voice much more strongly heard,” said Onida.

The third part of the meeting, moderated by ICIMOD’s Director General David Molden, presented the lessons learned and then moved on from the past, reminding members that a process towards the future of the Mountain Partnership had already begun.

Olman Serrano, Mountain Partnership Secretariat Coordinator presented the new process towards the future of the Mountain Partnership. The secretariat’s decentralized hubs gave their views, together with Italy and Switzerland as donors and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), as host of the Mountain Partnership Secretariat central hub and donor.

“Looking to the future, FAO stands ready to upscale the future mountain agenda of the Mountain Partnership, through its unmatched global network and direct access to international instruments and fora,” said Eduardo Rojas-Briales, Assistant Director General at FAO’s Forestry Department. “So long as we continue talking to each other, there will be scope for the Mountain Partnership,” he concluded.

Download the Third Global Meeting Agenda, and for a detailed report, see From the future we want to the future we choose: highlights of the Third Global Meeting of the Mountain Partnership at Rio+20.