Mountain Youth’s Appeal to Rio+20 Delegates

We, the participants of the Mt. Pavilion event on: ‘Global Youth Forum on Mountain Issues and Sustainable Actions’, considering also key messages received from the 6th World Youth Congress, Rio+20 Dialogues, Major Group on Children and Youth (MGCY) Conference-`Youth Blast’, and regional youth vibrations in Asia-Pacific, Africa, South, Central and North America, and Europe hereby appeal to the Rio+20 stakeholders with the following points:

1. Recognize that the benefits derived from mountain regions are essential for sustainable development; Mountain ecosystems play a crucial role in providing water and other ecosystem resources to a large portion of the world’s population; fragile mountain ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change, deforestation and forest degradation, biodiversity loss, land use and land cover change, and natural disasters; and mountain glaciers around the world are retreating and getting thinner with increasing impacts on the environment and human well-being.

2. We further recognize that mountains are often home to communities, including indigenous peoples and poor communities, who have developed sustainable uses of mountain resources. They are, however, often marginalized and lack access to education and support services, and we therefore stress that continued effort will be required to address poverty, food security and nutrition, social exclusion and environmental degradation in these areas, and invite States to strengthen cooperative action with effective involvement and sharing of experience of all relevant stakeholders, by establishing new or strengthening existing regional arrangements and canters of competence for sustainable mountain development. We call for greater efforts toward the conservation of mountain ecosystems, including their biodiversity as a foundation for green economy. We encourage States to adopt a long-term vision and holistic approaches, including through incorporating mountain-specific policies into national sustainable development strategies which could include, inter alia, poverty reduction plans and programs in mountain areas, particularly in developing countries.

In order to effectively tackle these issues and promote sustainable mountain development, the young populations, who are now facing uncertain future due to lack of employment, gainful education, health and other infrastructures, need to be fully mainstreamed in the development process. For this, we appeal the Rio+20 delegates, parties and concerned agencies to:

1. Properly recognize the critical role played by mountain ecosystems and people in sustaining the world’s environment and economies, by providing or sustaining water, biodiversity, landscapes, cultures, dialects etc. that are essential for upstream as well as downstream sustainability;

2. Justly compensate and reward the mountain communities for their good environment stewardship in managing the environment goods and services;

3. Equitably share benefit among different populations including children, youth, women and elderly population by promoting regional, national and intergenerational partnership for sustainable development;

4. Rationally develop and improve environmental governance system ensuring maximum inclusion of these groups and most importantly mainstreaming youth in the development processes – from planning to implementation and strategic decision making;

5. Efficiently develop and run institutional mechanisms offering opportunities to youth to get basic as well as higher education relevant to applied fields and existing development practices, develop their professional capacity, start enterprises and businesses creating green jobs in a responsible manner like in ecotourism, waste management, energy generation etc. and be part of the social, economic and environmental processes;

6. Timely develop Youth Councils at Global/UN (like UNCSD-MGCY, UNFCCC-YOUNGO, UNEP-TUNZA) as well as regional levels and promote youth knowledge net work and parliament at national/regional level to significantly improve youth engagement in various processes and activities of sustainable development; and

7. Develop provision of Green Youth Fund to work on mountain issues and also ensure existing mechanism have funding window for mountain youth – at UN, regional and national level to promote environmental entrepreneurship promoting green economy for sustainable development and poverty eradication.