News

Mountains celebrated worldwide on IMD 2020

23.12.2020

From online webinars and virtual book presentations, to physically distanced hikes and outdoor events, the message that mountains matter was spread far and wide around the world on 11 December. Government officials, environmentalists, mountaineers and schoolchildren found safe and creative ways to celebrate International Mountain Day (IMD) 2020.

"Mountain biodiversity matters" was the theme of IMD 2020, which celebrated the rich biodiversity found in mountains while raising awareness about the threats it faces and the solutions for halting biodiversity loss and improving livelihoods in mountains.

The Mountain Partnership Secretariat (MPS) held a photo contest for IMD. The contest focused on extraordinary and unusual mountain plants, crops and animals, as well as mountain landscapes with high biodiversity. The contest received over 500 entries from 55 countries. Chosen by a panel of judges from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the winners were Tarushi Agrawal from India (children category), Jaime Venegas from Ecuador (youth category) and Troise Carmine-Washi from Italy (adult category). They each received an action camera. View all the entries here.

Over 70 IMD related events were organized on the day in 28 countries. Online conferences, cultural exchanges, film festivals, mountain literature celebrations, tree plantings and hikes were conducted and held in countries such as Algeria, Canada, India, Kenya, Peru and Rwanda. View all the celebrations here.

This day is an annual occasion to make waves in the media to call attention to mountains. This year, over 5 400 tweets with the hashtag #MountainsMatter were delivered to more than 109 million Twitter timelines. More than 180 articles were published by major national and international news outlets, and an editorial by FAO Director-General QU Dongyu was published by over 20 international news outlets, including China Daily and La Repubblica.

As the lead coordinating United Nations agency of this annual celebration, FAO worked with decentralized offices, governments and civil society organizations to support awareness-raising events showing the importance of mountains to sustainable global development.

From Italy, FAO and the MPS co-organized a virtual event to celebrate mountain peoples and environments which featured the launch of a new study on food insecurity in rural mountains and a video with a soundtrack by Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi. The Nepalese trail and sky runner, Mira Rai, was also appointed a Mountain Partnership Goodwill Ambassador.

The Permanent Mission of the Kyrgyz Republic to the UN, on behalf of the Group of Friends of Mountainous Countries, in collaboration with FAO and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), organized a virtual event to foster cooperation development with regard to the preservation and restoration of fragile mountain ecosystems in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

UNEP furthermore hosted the online session "Mountains High - Adventure for Climate Action" to showcase the beauty and fragility of mountain ecosystems, the effects of climate change and the urgent need for action. Carolina Adler, President of the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation Mountain Protection Commission, was among the panelists.

On 11 December, UNEP, its Wild for Life campaign, and its Vanishing Treasures programme also launched a virtual journey across four mountain regions: the Tien Shan mountains in northern China; the Virunga mountains in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda; the “third pole” Hindu Kush Himalaya mountain region in south-central Asia; and Europe’s Carpathian mountains.

As a reminder of just how essential mountains are to Central Asia, the World Bank published the blog "Protecting Central Asia’s mountains and landscapes to transform people’s lives and livelihoods."

To inform the MPS of your International Mountain Day 2020 activities if you have not done so already, please email [email protected].