Alps / Europe

CIPRA, the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps, adopted a resolution on "Climate Protection and Climate Change Adaptation Strategies" at its Assembly of Delegates in Bad Hindelang/D on 18th May.

The Pro Monte final conference to be held in Chambéry/F on 8 and 9 June is entitled "Mountain Massifs and Territorial Co-operation in Europe". The Pro Monte Project launched as part of the EU Interact Initiative assists and networks players from European mountain regions looking for answers to urgent issues relating to environmental policy, regional planning and social matters.

ALPRO is a planning tool to be used by local authorities, organisations, promoters and investors to evaluate comprehensively the impact of landscape-altering projects in the Alpine region.

Slovenia has granted concessions for the planning of a series of power plants along the Mura, Drava and Sava rivers. The International Committee for the Protection of the Mura River Unsere Mur - Nasa Mura, founded in spring 2006, is opposing this threat to precious river landscapes of the Alps and pre-Alps.

The well-known winter sports resort of Aspen in the Rocky Mountains plans intends to cover its entire energy requirements from renewable sources by 2015, a move prompted first and foremost by the realisation that climate change poses a genuine threat to winter tourism in Aspen.

The keynote event of the 32nd Meeting of the Standing Committee of the Alpine Conference focused on international mountain partnerships. In future the Alpine Convention is aiming to co-operate first and foremost with players from the mountain regions of Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Carpathians and the Balkans.

CIPRA, the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps, has just received confirmation from the EU Commission that it has been allocated a stand at Green Week 2006, one of the world's largest annual discussion forums on environmental policy.

The 2nd "Water in Mountains" International Congress on "Integrated Management of High Watersheds - Implementing the European Water-Framework Directive" is to be held in Megève/F from 20 to 22 September 2006.

The three-day conference "Nature Protection in the Caucasus" was held in Berlin/D from 9 to 11 March 2006.

On 7 and 8 November 2005 representatives of the eight member states of the Alpine Convention attended a seminar on the creation of an ecological network of protected areas to debate the possibilities for establishing an ecological network spanning the Alps. The alpMedia dossier entitled "Ecological Networks" drawn up on that occasion provides an overview of the instruments that play an important role in the establishment of ecological networks at the global, pan-European, European and national levels.