Ts'ehlanyane Nature Park, Lesotho

ARCOS Hosting 1st African Mountains Regional Forum

ARCOS and the Africa Mountain Partnership Champions Committee in partnership with the East African Community (EAC), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Austrian Development Agency (ADA), and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) are organizing the 1st African Mountains Regional Forum (AMRF). The goal of this forum is to enhance collaboration and frame a regional agenda for sustainable mountain development in African mountains.

This forum will take place from October 22nd-24th at the Ngurdoto Hotel in Arusha, Tanzania. It will bring together senior officials from African government institutions, as well as researchers, civil society actors and private sector members from Africa and other regions around the world.

Specific objectives of this forum are to provide an opportunity for sustainable mountain development stakeholders to enhance their understanding of common conservation and development issues in the region, identify strategic actions to address major emerging issues such as climate change in the region, and to promote collaboration between stakeholders for a regional framework on sustainable mountain development in Africa. In addition, the forum will share lessons and experiences in meeting the conservation and development challenges including water, energy, food security and climate change in Africa Mountain regions.

JRS has been supporting ARCOS since 2011, at first to plan and prototype the Albertine Rift Biodiversity Portal and build capacity in data management (2011), and now to enhance mechanisms for data collection and sharing with strategically selected institutions, local experts and volunteers (2013) and to launch the portal. JRS is proud that the portal may contribute to this forum and its goal of promoting partnerships among researchers in Africa and across the world while also creating an agenda for preserving biodiversity in Africa’s mountainous regions.

To register or submit papers for presentation at the forum, as well as to learn more about event, please click here. The registration deadline is 15th August 2014. To learn more about the 2014 AMRF, click here to view the program.