Workshop recommendations on DIIS (Draft International Implementation Scheme)

Mountains are already highly-stressed physical and cultural landscapes. Conflict, over-exploitation of scarce resources, inadequate infrastructure and the distancing of communities from processes that impact their lives and livelihoods have deeply ruptured traditionally sustainable systems here which need repair and rejuvenation.

The workshop:

Demands an end to the militarisation of eco-sensitive and fragile mountain areas and the cessation of conflicts in them. A return to peace and human security in these regions is of paramount importance.

Urges immediate efforts towards trans-boundary cooperation for conservation and protection. Inter-government action is needed to ensure the preservation of cultural landscapes, and trans-boundary protected areas need to be set up.

Recognises the pre-emininent role traditional institutions and traditional knowledge play in the holistic and inter-disciplinary systems that have sustained mountain regions - and which naturally combine society, environment and economy - and emphasises the need to incorporate these into:

  •  Locale- and context-specific education, available from primary school to institutions of higher learning, and the
      creation of teaching material and aids that are locally relevant.

  •  Teacher/educator training whether in systems of formal education, adult and community learning, or through
      community-based organisations and the voluntary sector.

  •  A reappraisal of the respect and values accorded to indigenous and traditional knowledge, whose interface
     with modern technical and scientific knowledge streams needs strengthening and binding - local, innovative
     and appropriate technologies are vital to halt natural resource degradation and promote sustainable utilisation
     of resources.

Calls for the strengthening of local institutions and not their replacement / marginalisation by undemocratic structures that are political in origin; and emphasises that women's / girls' education is the key to successful conservation and protection, planning and implementation.

Recommends international and cooperation for the identification of accurate sets of baseline data on mountain regions to aid local, regional, national and trans-boundary planning.

Is concerned that planning, policy and implementation is undertaken by people with little or inadequate understanding of mountain regions, and therefore that their training and re-training include mountain-specific programmes in national academies together with locale-specific orientation.

Finds that commercial exploitation of the resources of mountain regions combines with a statistical central approach to development that ignores local strengths and conditions; that investment must generate local wealth, be micro and not macro, and engender responsible local entrepreneurship.

Identifies an urgent need for information and communication technologies to be developed, in the context of inadequate infrastructure, that connect communities and build networks of practitioners and stakeholders for the exchange of knowledge and best practices.

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