Issue 29 - April 2008

'Peak to Peak' is an opportunity to keep you up-to-date with the latest news, activities and events related to the Mountain Partnership. This current issue of the Peak to Peak newsletter will be sent out as a shorter version and in English only. In the forthcoming months the Secretariat, together with its regional partners, will develop a revised Mountain Partnership newsletter. Meanwhile we invite our readers and members to submit feedback and suggestions at: info@mountainpartnership.org

Membership

We wish to welcome three new members who have recently joined the Mountain Partnership: the CEE Himalaya Centre for Environment Education, the Research Unit - Mountain Research: Man & Environment (IGF) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Adelboden Group (ABG)..

Mountain Partnership Secretariat

The Mountain Partnership Secretariat is presently restructuring by establishing new decentralized offices - or “hubs”-  in regional organizations involved in mountain development. As a complement to the central hub at FAO in Rome, this new structure will allow us to have a more active presence and closer contact with the Mountain Partnership members working at the regional level. The new host institutions include ICIMOD (Kathmandu, Nepal) for Asia, the International Potato Centre CIP/CONDESAN (Lima, Peru) for Latin America and Mountain Culture at the Banff Centre (Banff,Canada) for North America. As a result of this process we are undergoing recruitment and have several new appointments to announce: Zaya Batjargal – a national from Mongolia – is the newly appointed Mountain Partnership Officer at ICIMOD with responsibility for Asia . We would also like to introduce Edith Fernandez-Baca who, from June, will join CIP/CONDESAN as the new Mountain Secretariat Officer for Latin America. She is a Peruvian national and will be based in Lima. Amy Krause, Canadian, works at the Banff Centre  and will have the main responsibility for Mountain Partnership activities in North America.
We would like to inform you that Jane Ross, Communications Officer in the Mountain Partnership Secretariat for the past several years, left the Secretariat team at the end of January to take up a new and important assignment at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. We wish her all the best in the future.
We are pleased to announce that Sara Manuelli has joined the Secretariat team in Rome. Sara will be the focal point for print and electronic information and communications for the Mountain Partnership, the web site and the newsletter. Mauro Meleddu, volunteer, has also joined to contribute to the development of communication material. Alexia Baldascini, Mountain Products Programme manager at FAO, is now also providing support to the Mountain Partnership Secretariat to broker initiatives between MP members and other stakeholders in the Mediterranean and Africa regions. They will join the existing members of our Secretariat team:  Douglas McGuire, Coordinator of the Mountain Partnership Secretariat, Rosalaura Romeo, Programme Officer and Marco Perri, Information Systems Officer.  

Update on Partnership Activities

Andes Initiative

In September 2007, members of the Andean Initiative met for the first time in Tucumán (Argentina).
All participants jointly identified their priority areas for promoting sustainable mountain development in the Region while the government representatives issued a political declaration. As a follow up to the meeting, the Mountain Partnership supported some participants in approaching donors to mobilise new resources for the region. As a result of this, the Government of Ecuador has recently submitted a project proposal to FAO for promoting the development of the Cotopaxi region. At regional level, the Andean countries are discussing the possibility of presenting to FAO a request for the funding of a regional project aimed at promoting and strengthening natural resource management in the Region, a better sharing of information at regional level and a deeper involvement of decentralised/local authorities and of civil society. These projects – if approved – would be funded by the FAO Technical Cooperation Programme  (TCP) which supports the FAO Member Nations through small projects addressing specific issues in sectors that relate to FAO’s work. 

Mountain Products in Morocco

The Mountain Partnership Secretariat has successfully brokered an initiative between the Government of Morocco, the FAO Mountain Products Programme (operated in the context of the Mountain Partnership), a local NGO (Migrations et Développement) and the Slow Food movement to support promotion of high-value mountain products from the Anti-Atlas region of Morocco. Building on two past studies (produits du terroir and saffron) carried out by Migrations et Développement and funded by FAO Mountain Products Programme, this initiative focuses on capacity building of small-scale producers and local organizations (Office de Mise en Valeur Agricole de Ouarzazate, Région Souss Massa Drâa and Migrations et Développement) in improved production, processing and marketing of saffron. The seed money for the initiative (US $ 283,000 for 18 months) is provided by the FAO Technical Cooperation Programme. It is expected that this pilot project will lead to replication of activities for promotion of other high-value mountain products in the region and on a national scale.

For further information on the FAO Mountain Products Programme, contact Alexia Baldascini.

Education and Training

A training and education initiative is being made available mainly to Mountain Partnership members by a consortium promoted by the Mountain Partnership Secretariat together with the UNESCO Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) and led by the Faculty of Agriculture of the Turin University. In a successful example of decentralized cooperation,  the Piedmont Region and a number of local partners such as the Vercelli Province, the Alagna Mountaineering Organization (CAI), the Valsesia Natural Park, the Valsesia Municipality and the Valsesia Mountain Community, have all worked together to make this initiative feasible. The partners have created a mountain oriented training programme –  called IPROMO (International Programme on Research and Training on Sustainable Management of Mountain Areas) which intends to offer, on a regular basis, training and education courses on the sustainable management of mountain areas. A number of fellowships for students from developing countries will be made available. The first course will focus on “Mountain environment and global change” and will run from 23 July to 6 August 2008, with 15 days of "full immersion". It will include lectures, practice, labs, and field trips. Over 150 applications from all over the world have been received.

For further details visit the website: http://www.ipromo-school.it/en/course.html

Who is who in the mountain world

The Mountain Forum Regional Networks and Secretariat are currently carrying out a "Who's Who" mapping exercise to identify key mountain stakeholders worldwide. The exercise is taking place within the framework of the collaboration between the Mountain Forum and Mountain Partnership. The stakeholders will be identified by key thematic areas (Natural resources, Livelihoods, Climate change and cross cutting issues) as well as by region and country. Access to the profiles of the key organizations is meant to enhance collaboration, partnership and networking amongst the various mountain stakeholders to promote the Mountain Agenda at the regional and global level. An analysis of key organizations active in geographical or thematic areas, indicating the potential synergies, will be made available in June 2008.  

For more information, please visit www.mtnforum.org/whoiswho/whome.cfm 
 

Decentralized cooperation in Mahgreb developments

The “Needs’ assessment of developing mountain regions” project, funded by the Valle d’Aosta region (Italy) and linked to the Mountain Partnership Secretariat, has shifted to a more operational phase. The province of Chtouka Ait Baha in the Sous-Massa-Drâa district, located in the Anti-Atlas range in the Moroccan region, has been selected as the area where to conduct the studies foreseen by the project document. This is in the light of Mountain Products Programme experience in the same Moroccan mountain area, specifically on the “saffron” project, and in the view of a possible replication of this project in other mountainous regions. A pre-identification mission was carried out in February by Mountain Partnership Secretariat experts to verify the feasibility of the project and meet possible local partners to discuss the implementation of the activities.  

For further information on these decentralized activities, please contact Rosalaura Romeo at rosalaura.romeo@fao.org and visit the Decentralized Cooperation section of the Mountain Partnership website.

Broadband Communications study

At the request of several members of the Mountain Partnership, a number of activities and studies have been promoted by the Mountain Partnership Secretariat focusing on exploring the potentials of broadband technology for reducing the digital divide and promoting development in mountain areas.  Click here to read the findings.

News Highlights from around the world

Andean crop: the "food of the future"

An international conference opened on 25 March 2008 in Cusco, Peru, to discuss the potato’s potential in agriculture, the economy and food security, especially in the world’s poorest countries. 2008 has been designated by the United Nations as the International Year of the Potato, an Andean crop that produces more food on less land than maize, wheat or rice. This crop - which some scientists are calling “the food of the future”- grown in more than 100 countries is already a key part of the global food system. It is the world’s No. 1 non-grain food commodity and world production reached a record 320 million tonnes in 2007. The International Potato Center  (CIP)  and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) organized the four-day Conference, where more than 90 of the world’s leading authorities on the potato and on research-for-development shared insights and recent research results to develop strategies for increasing the productivity, profitability and sustainability of potato-based systems. They addressed potato development challenges facing three distinct economic typologies in developing countries, as presented by the World Bank in the World Development Report 2008. They focused on agriculture-based economies, mainly in Africa, the transforming economies of Africa, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa and the urbanized economies typical of Latin America, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. One of the outputs of the conference has been dubbed the “Cusco Challenge”, a year-long dialogue within the global potato science community that will address issues and opportunities in the future development of this essential crop.

Canada to create New National Park Reserve in the Northwest Territories

A new national park is about to be created in the North of Canada, beside the Nahanni National Park Reserve. Environment Minister John Baird announced on 7 April that the Naats'ihch'oh (which means “stands like a porcupine” in local language) National Park Reserve covering some 1.9 million acres along one of the country's most spectacular northern rivers will be established in May. Naats'ihch'oh will encompass a large portion of the Sahtu Dene and Métis peoples’ ancestral lands. It will also protect habitat for several endangered species in the region, including grizzly bears and the northern mountain woodland caribou. The park is known for spectacular landscapes and waterways and is virtually untouched by development. These qualities, combined with impressive whitewater rapids make the region popular with expert paddlers who use the legendary “Moose Ponds” as a staging point for canoeing the challenging upper Nahanni River. The government announced it would contribute $500,000 over two years to help local aboriginal communities to finalize an impact and benefit plan.  The North is currently witnessing many great changes in natural resource development. The announcement marks the second major expansion of protected areas since last summer, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper pledged to extend the boundaries of the Nahanni National Park Reserve.

Mountain glaciers are shrinking at accelerating rate.

From the Andes to the Himalayas, the world's mountain glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, according to the UN Environment  Programme (UNEP). The findings come from a report issued at the end of March by the World Glacier Monitoring Service, which is based at the University of Zurich and supported by UNEP. "The latest figures are part of what appears to be an accelerating trend with no apparent end in sight," said Wilfried Haeberli, the Director of the Service. The study included data from 30 glaciers spread around nine mountainous regions. Millions if not billions of people depend directly or indirectly on these natural water storage facilities for drinking water, agriculture, industry and power generation during key parts of the year. Several ice experts, not associated with the report, said year-to-year changes in the overall mass of ice locked in these moving frozen rivers did not always denote a trend. But they added that the long-term trend was clearly towards a warming world with less mountain ice and related water troubles, including both floods and shortages .  

Past Events

Mountains of the World: Ecology, Conservation and Sustainable Development
(Oman, 10-15 February 2008)

An important process to promote sustainable mountain development in the world’s arid and semi-arid mountain regions was initiated at the international conference “Mountains of the World: ecology, conservation and sustainable development”, held at Sultan Qaboos University in the Sultanate of Oman, 10-14 February 2008. The conference presented the results of a multi-year research programme in Oman’s Al Jabal Al Akhdar mountains and allowed an international gathering of experts and researchers to share their experiences from dry land mountains throughout the world and provide recommendations on specific actions needed to pursue an enhanced agenda in these highly sensitive and vitally important mountain ecosystems. The Mountain Partnership Secretariat will be working actively with members to follow-up on the conference’s recommendations and to facilitate collaborative actions by Mountain Partnership members in the context of a dry mountain agenda.

Climate Change and Mountains

Several international conferences have been organized in April to address mountains and global change, including two recent events in Austria: “Mountain Forests in a Changing World”, organized by the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna, 2-4 April and the COST strategic workshop “Global Change and Sustainable Development in Mountain Regions”, organized by the Austrian Federal Research and Training Centre for Forests, Natural Hazards and Landscape (BFW) and the research unit IGF of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in Innsbruck, 7-9 April. Both focussed on the implications and challenges of climate, political and socio-economic change for the future development of mountain areas, including research and education. An additional conference on “Mountains as Early Indicators of Climate Change” has been organized by UNEP, Ev-K2-CNR and Padua University, 17-18 April in Padua, Italy, to gather international experts to discuss the impact of global warming on mountain ecosystem services.  

The Mountain Partnership Secretariat, along with the conference organizers and key Mountain Partnership members, are working to ensure that the discussions and results of each event are linked and fed into the overall process of enhancing understanding and promoting collaborative action to face these important challenges in mountain ecosystems. The Secretariat will facilitate a workshop in the near future to assist key Mountain Partnership members working on global and climate change issues to develop a more coherent agenda for future cooperation in this crucial area.

Future events

CSD-16th session of the Commission on Sustainable development
(New York, 5-16 May 2008)

The Review Session of the CSD in the two year implementation cycle will focus on identifying barriers and constraints in implementation, as well as lessons learned and best practices in relation to its thematic cluster. CSD 16  thematic issues are agriculture, rural development, land, drought, desertification, and Africa. In the context of the Mountain Partnership, key members, including the “Adelboden Group” and  the FAO SARD-M Project will present a side event on the “Main challenges for a sustainable agriculture and a rural development in mountain regions”.

International Day for Biological Diversity and Agriculture
(Global, 22 May 2008)

Agriculture is a key example of how human activities have profound impacts on the ecosystems of our planet. This year’s theme for the International Day for Biological Diversity (IBD), “Biodiversity and Agriculture,” seeks to highlight the importance of sustainable agriculture not only to preserve biodiversity, but also to ensure that we will be able to feed the world, to maintain agricultural livelihoods, and to enhance human well being into the 21st century and beyond.

Understanding and Managing Amenity-Led Migration in Mountain Regions
(Banff, Alberta, Canada, 15-19 May 2008)

This international conference, organized by Mountain Culture at The Banff Centre and the International Amenity Migration Centre (IAMC), will bring together planners and policy-makers, researchers and practitioners, elected officials and entrepreneurs. The event will address the accelerating change in some mountain regions, present accounts of the associated economic, social and environmental impacts and risks. Connect with people from around the world who are managing, planning for, and studying amenity-led change in mountain communities. For more information visit: http://www.banffcentre.ca/mountainculture/mtnconferences/am/

For more information on future mountain-related events around the world, browse the Mountain Calendar, managed by the Mountain Forum