On 20-22 June 2022 an interregional workshop hosted by UNEP in Vienna gathered more than fifty representatives of mountain regions of the world. The workshop was part of the Adaptation at Altitude project financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation seeking to increase the resilience and adaptive capacity of mountain communities and ecosystems to climate change. Mountain stakeholders from the Andes, East Africa, the Himalaya-Hindukush Region, South Caucasus, the Carpathians and the Alps carried out a governance simulation unfolding in an imaginary world, where five countries share a mountain range but vary in size population, energy profile and resource endowment. The participants succeeded in designing and implementing a coherent vision for achieving a desired future for their respective countries by means of investments in national and regional assets as well as the development of a regional governance instrument that fosters cooperation in climate change adaptation. An excursion to the Rax mountain, where the importance of protecting the high-altitude water sources for Vienna’s water supply pipelines was highlighted, rounded the workshop off.
“Cooperation across mountain regions makes sense even if they are different, because they all need to cope with climate change and make the voice of the mountains heard at global level” said Wolfger Mayrhofer, Deputy Secretary General of the Alpine Convention.
Find out more on https://mountains-connect.org/.
Title picture: Surge chamber Kaiserbrunn