World Mountain Forum: Moving Mountains toward Global Sustainable Development

World Mountain Forum: Moving Mountains toward Global Sustainable Development

Cusco, Peru – 23 & 24 May 2014

Mountains, covering approximately 25% of the Earth’s land surface, are home to about 850 million people and provide indispensable goods and services for all humankind. However, many mountain regions suffer from dire poverty, widespread land degradation, inequitable land rights, and are already enduring severe negative impacts from climate change. As testimony of this situation, estimates indicate that approximately 35% of the mountain population in developing and transition countries are vulnerable to food insecurity while half are chronically hungry.

Mountains are among the regions most sensitive to and already getting affected by climate change. Their diverse ecosystems act as early indicators of change, e.g. through rapid glacier retreat, with consequences felt far beyond mountain boundaries, making climate change in mountains a concern of regional and global dimension.

In order to promote Sustainable Mountain Development (SMD) in view of the considerable global challenges ahead, several engaged partners have jointly launched the World Mountain Forum (WMF). It provides an outstanding platform for SMD and brings together SMD stakeholders from around the globe, providing them a platform for exchange about their experience, promotion of collaborative action and for fostering political dialogue among different levels of government and society. The overall goal therefore, is to create dialogue with articulated concrete actions and concerted efforts of how to address the plight of these fragile ecosystems, through SDM.
The WMF 2014 will showcase and discuss available local, regional and global experience in mountain development. It will identify opportunities and challenges for the future of global SMD is likely to face. The WMF 2014 is expected to produce insights that will feed into other relevant global initiatives and events such as the UN Secretary General’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability (GSP) and the CSD biennial cycle 20/21 in which mountains are one of five priority themes. Furthermore, it will deliver valuable input to the main global sustainable development processes including the Rio- (UNFCCC, CBD, UNCCD) and RAMSAR Convention. It is expected that the WMF 2014 will also contribute to the Post-2015 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) process at the national, regional and global levels. The WMF 2014 will bring the opportunity for mountain countries to discuss on how better ensure mountains are adequately incorporated into the future climate deal that the COP20 (Lima, December 2014) will advance.

Key topics

The WMF 2014 will cover the following topics: Family Farming, Water and Food Security; Climate Change; Mountain cities; and Mountain Communities. As each topic is very broad, the WMF 2014 is proposing some priority issues that will be covered by presentations from participants. Based on the material received, the organizing committee will arrange the sessions of the WMF. The presentations may have the form of paper, poster or audiovisual.

Key dates

28.Feb.2014 Deadline for submission of abstracts for presentations

10.Mar.2014 Announcement of selected presentations

15.Mar.2014 Registration deadline

31.Mar.2014 Deadline for final version of presentations

23.May.2014 Starting of the WMF 2014

More information: wmf@mtnforum.org