The indigenous tribal communities of the Nilgiri Reserve base their economy on the collection and cultivation of forest products (including coffee), handing down their cultural, agricultural and linguistic traditions from generation to generation. Accompanying the indigenous peoples of the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve in asserting their rights and commercializing their promucts, while...

The Kitarasa Banana is an important element of food culture at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. This banana variety is used to make flour for porridge, to produce a traditional local beer and as mixture with traditional dishes. Nevertheless, Kitarasa producers are decreasing, due to changes in culture, lifestyle, poor...

The event takes place in Mukono Town on May 12 Unlocking community barriers for a profitable and open source agroforestry coffee value chain: this is the leading theme at the 4th Slow Food Uganda Coffee Festival. Slow Food Uganda believes that agroforestry in coffee production is the key to achieving sustainability...

Mountains and islands make up 30 percent of the earth's surface area and are home to approximately 1.3 billion people. Mountain and island communities are among the worst hit by climate change, suffering from high rates of poverty and hunger and struggling to cope with natural disasters. The Mountain Partnership Secretariat...

Mountain soils represent a finite, virtually non-renewable resource that provides essential ecosystem services for life on Earth, not only in the mountains but also downstream (FAO and ITPS, 2015). Although the average soil formation rate is not easy to assess, due to the variability of the soil forming factors (Jenny,...

No se puede discutir que la demanda de “café sostenible” está en su punto más alto. Ahora, más que nunca, tanto las marcas como los consumidores se dan cuenta de la importancia de cultivar, comprar y beber café que sea social y ambientalmente sostenible. Hay una serie de razones complejas que impulsan este...

Traditional mountain landscapes governed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs) conserve unique wildlife and agrobiodiversity, and strongly support climate change adaptation and mitigation by protecting ecosystem services, including grasslands that store almost 50% more carbon than forests. But mountain biodiversity and the Indigenous and traditional peoples that sustain it are...

Welcome to the latest edition of IIED’s forests newsletter.We are excited to announce the Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) International Conference, share a story from the FFF's work in Nepal and an Integrated Community Forest Management Monitoring and Evaluation Tool developed by IIED in partnership with the Rainforest Alliance.

Este cuaderno práctico, dirigido tanto a productores orgánicos/ecológicos (agricultores, procesadores) como aquellos que han entrado en transición orgánica/ecológica, vinculados acadenas devalor y que trabajan en agroecosistemas de montaña, tiene el objetivo de brindar una herramienta de apoyo para el registro de información importante para la verificación de la calidad orgánica...

The Low Carbon Dairy Farm consists of conducting an environmental and technico-economic diagnosis on each farm and identifying potential actions to improve its carbon footprint. The objective is to build a progression strategy in collaboration with the farmer, so that the action plan fits the realities of the farm and...

Known for their smaller size and brown colour, Busha cattle have withstood the harsh climate and living conditions in mountainous parts of the Balkan Peninsula for centuries. In Serbia, the Busha breed is not only an important element of animal genetic diversity, but also a source of food and income...

Euromontana has worked on the Smart Villages concept since 2017 as member of the European Network for Rural Development’s Thematic Group on the topic. Through the Horizon 2020 project SIMRA (Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas), Euromontana also contributed to broaden the definition of the concept, by advocating that the Smart Villages approach...

Ma Thi Ninh thought farming would be relatively easy. The Yen Duong area of Viet Nam where she lives has excellent, arable land and offers many sought-after products, including organic sticky rice, seasonal vegetables and bamboo used for traditional handicraft products. But once she started to farm and trade in...

El 14 de abril de 2020, el federado Daniel Ahumada fue víctima de la usurpación de su campo, ubicado en Cruz del Eje, provincia de Córdoba. El usurpador, valiéndose de un arma de fuego, amenazó a Daniel, su madre y su hijo, para quedarse con la propiedad, argumentando haberla comprado....

This publication presents a collection of case studies by Mountain Partnership (MP) members from around the world, highlighting experiences of agroecological mountain farming systems. It aims to increase attention toward agroecological principles and approaches and showcase their potential. The MP, the only United Nations global voluntary alliance dedicated to sustainable...

On 12th October 2021, Euromontana organised its annual conference on “Being young in a mountain area in 2021”. The event was the opportunity to highlight the needs and desires of young people for the future of the mountains. The conference gave the floor to different mountain organisations that have recently...

The State of the World’s Trees, published in September 2021, shares the results of the Global Tree Assessment (GTA) - the first conservation assessment of all of the world’s trees. The results tell us that 30% of all tree species - more than 17,500 species - are threatened with extinction....

How to encourage generation renewal, young people to stay, newcomers to settle? Which barriers do they face and how policies can help to overcome them? These were the questions raised during the conference of the Horizon 2020 project Ruralization on 8th and 9th November 2021, where Blandine Camus, Communication and Policy Officer,...

In Spain, the G100 Rural Proofing project aims to develop a Spanish model for rural proofing. The G100 initiative is led by the social economy NGO El Hueco and is supported by the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and the region of Navarra.  The impact of legislation on rural areas has been analysed for...

This report, elaborated in the frame of EU-funded LIFE project OREKA MENDIAN (2016-2022), focuses on how human activities can support sustainable management of mountain grasslands in Europe. Today, more than 75% of the grassland area in the EU-28 is considered to have an unfavourable conservation status. The widely negative picture of...