The ninth General Assembly of ALPARC – the Alpine Network of Protected Areas – took place online on 22nd January 2021. Discussions centred around the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the future work of ALPARC.
The pandemic has been a double-edged sword for protected areas: on the one hand, it brought many more visitors to ecologically sensitive areas, putting further pressure on them. At the same time, this visibility helped raise public awareness around the need to better protect precious mountain areas.
The ongoing health crisis has illustrated the extent to which humans are inextricably linked to nature. Particularly from the view of the accelerated degradation of ecosystems in the Alps, it is more important than ever to join as one voice to raise awareness about the key role of mountain biodiversity and the need to integrate its specificity into the global biodiversity agenda.
The diverse activities on which we work together with ALPARC support this goal and we look forward to further cooperation with ALPARC in implementing the goals of the Alpine Convention and contributing to the protection and sustainable development of Alpine areas.
“The more challenging the times are, the more we need cooperation.”
- Alenka Smerkolj, Secretary General of the Alpine Convention
ALPARC – the Alpine Network of Protected Areas – has been facilitating the sharing of expertise, lessons learned, techniques and methods between the managers of Alpine protected areas since 1995. The network also seeks to realise cooperation projects involving managers who want to provide consistent levels of conservation and sustainable development in the Alps in accordance with the Alpine Convention and the application of the Nature Conservation and Landscape Management Protocol.