Following-up the 4th Global Meeting of the Mountain Partnership (MP) in Erzurum, Turkey in autumn last year, UNEP - through its Vienna Office - is currently gearing up together with other partners to mainstream mountain-related issues into the SDG debate.

Mountains provide various ecosystems goods and services, such as water, energy, and food, which are important to the lowland areas and thus global sustainable development. The importance of mountains has been also acknowledged in the recent Rio+20 outcome document “The Future we want” and its “mountains” section further reinforced by the recently endorsed UN GA Resolution on Sustainable mountain development.

In order to provide policy-makers, in particular members of the Open Working Group (OWG) meeting in New York, with a guidance for discussions, UNEP together with its collaborating centre GRID Arendal, the Austrian Development Agency (ADA), Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, CDE Bern and FAO and other partners including the Alpine and Carpathian Convention is preparing a series of thematic briefs related to mountain-specific clusters such as energy, climate change and disaster risk reduction, and forestry/biodiversity.

At the margins of the 7th session of the OWG in New York on 6-10 January, a side event was held entitled ”Building resilience to climate change in mountain regions” to raise the issue for mountains in the current SDG debate. The event was organized by FAO in cooperation with UNEP. At the event, diplomats from Argentina, Italy, Kyrgyzstan and Peru stressed the need for global attention to mountains. UNEP and its collaborating centre GRID Arendal presented the produced policy brief called “Why mountains matter for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction – A Call for Action on the SDGs”, capitalizing on the various information and data gained throughout numerous projects and activities of UNEP and its partners.

For the produced briefs and more information on the event, see here and here.