News

Renewing commitment to mountain development: Mountain Partnership rendez-vous at Rio+20

06.06.2012

PRESS RELEASE

6 June 2012 / Rome (Italy) Under the slogan “The future we want: mountains as living solutions for development”, more than 50 members of the Mountain Partnership will hold their Third Global Meeting in the Mountain Pavilion within the framework of the Rio+20 Conference to be held in Brazil.

The meeting will take place on Thursday, 19 June, from 16.00 to 19.00 hours, with an agenda that includes presentation and discussion of the Partnership’s new strategy and objectives for the next five years (2013-2017). The observations and views of participating countries on the subject “Ten years of the Mountain Partnership: members in action” will also be gathered.

In advance of the Rio de Janeiro event, the Mountain Partnership has opened an electronic consultation for all its members in the form of an e-forum on its website, with a view to collecting opinions concerning the strategic objectives and the new governing structure. Ways of making joint work more effective in response to the opportunities mountains offer for the “future we want” are also being discussed in this e-forum.

“The Third Global Assembly is a splendid opportunity to renew commitment to mountain development after ten years of activity since its foundation at the Johannesburg Summit in 2002. This will be achieved through a strong Partnership with active members in every part of the world,” said Olman Serrano, Mountain Partnership Coordinator.

“The Partnership has encouraged its members to join the campaign launched in October 2011 to incorporate ‘mountain language’ into the Rio+20 Final Document. In recent months, the paragraphs on mountains have increased from one to three, including input from many Partnership members to highlight such crucial issues as water, climate change and the need to promote regional and international agreements,” Mr Serrano added.

The meeting will be held in the Mountain Pavilion, an innovative initiative headed by the Government of Peru together with 35 strategic partners. Amongst these, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Consortium for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Ecoregion (CONDESAN), Italian Development Cooperation and the Mountain Partnership Secretariat will showcase the solutions that mountains can offer for the future we seek to bring about.

Learn more (Agenda, Key messages, etc.) 

Some interesting facts:

● The Mountain Partnership is a broad-based voluntary association incorporating countries, United Nations bodies, intergovernmental organizations and major groups from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Near East, and North America.

● 50 countries, 19 intergovernmental organizations and 113 major groups and NGOs are currently members of the Mountain Partnership. The Secretariat is based at FAO (Rome), CONDESAN (Lima), the University of Central Asia (Bishkek) and UNEP (Nairobi and Vienna).

Photo credit: (c) gigi62 / Flickr