Alps / Europe

This year for the first time (and every four years thereafter) the Contracting Parties to the Alpine Convention are to give an account as to whether and to what extent they have met their obligations under the terms of the Convention and its Implementing Protocols.

The theme chosen for this year's International Mountain Day is "Sustainable Tourism for Poverty Alleviation in Mountain Areas". As in the two previous years it is being held on 11 December.

Austria's Chair of the Alpine Convention sees it as a priority task to focus more on specialist issues during the meetings of the Standing Committee in order once again to develop a greater sensibility for vital issues in the alpine region.

25 communities in Italy, Austria, Germany, France and Switzerland have come together to form the "Pearls of the Alps" network. Their objective is to combine tourist sights with the benefits of gentle mobility.

By October of next year, South Tyrol/I wants to be able to receive data from the various earth observation satellites and evaluate it at a purpose-built facility at the European Academy in Bolzano.

The main aim of the recently launched AWARE project (Available Water Resources in Mountain Environments) is to provide tools for monitoring and forecasting water availability and distribution in those drainage basins where snowmelt is a major component of the annual water balance in Alpine catchments.

The Sempach Ornithological Station and the Swiss Association for the Protection of Birds [Schweizer Vogelschutz] have developed a Swiss Bird Index (SBI) modelled on stock exchange indices.

CIPRA, the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps, has awarded prizes worth a total of €160,000 to eight outstanding projects aimed at sustainable development in the Alpine region. The awards for the Future in the Alps Competition were presented today at CIPRA's annual conference in Brig/CH.

MIREN (Mountain Invasion Research Network) is a new global research network that was founded this summer as part of a workshop in Vienna/A. It focuses on the problem of invasive plants in mountain regions, particularly from the aspect of global change.

The third research symposium of the Hohe Tauern National Park/A, which was held for the first time as a transalpine conference on research into protected areas, ended on 17 September. At the conference 72 scientists from eight countries discussed a range of cross-border issues.