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Guest Article - Mountain sustainability: Turning competing interests into a shared vision

30.07.2019

About one billion people live in mountainous areas around the world, but we all depend, in some way, on healthy mountains and their benefits, including water, food, energy, biodiversity and employment. Finding ways to protect and conserve mountain ecosystems while enabling people to improve their livelihoods is one of the keys to achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Turning what may look like competing interests into a shared vision is essential to successful management of mountain resources. This is where education in sustainability can make a big difference.

Ghanshyam Pande of India, for example, works to promote the sustainable development of mountain communities, mainly in the Himalayan states of India. As Programme Coordinator of the Central Himalayan Institute for Nature (CHINAR), he is one of 35 students from 25 countries who have been selected out of 400 applications for a course in the Italian Alps on the sustainable management of mountains.

The two-week international course on sustainable mountain development, IPROMO, is organized every summer by the Mountain Partnership Secretariat of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), with the University of Turin and the University of Tuscia in Italy.

Since 2007, some 400 people from different countries have traveled to Italy to attend this unique course, which is designed to strengthen the capacities of professionals from countries which belong to the Mountain Partnership. The Mountain Partnership aims, in part, to protect the vitality of mountains, while also improving the social and economic well-being of mountain people, many of whom are among the world’s most vulnerable populations.

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This article was written by Rosalaura Romeo, Programme Officer, Mountain Partnership Secretariat/FAO and published by IISD Reporting Services

Photo from IISD