Mountain Partnership
The Mountain Partnership is an official United Nations partnership and international voluntary alliance dedicated to improving the lives of mountain peoples and protecting mountain environments around the world. History. During the preparatory process of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesberg, South Africa, in 2002, the governments of Italy and Switzerland, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) embarked on an effort to organize a new partnership to strengthen cooperation and more effectively address the needs of mountain peoples and environments around the world. As a result, the International Partnership for  Sustainable Development of Mountain Regions, known as the Mountain Partnership, was launched. Membership. The Mountain Partnership currently has 370 members, comprising governments, intergovernmental organizations and major groups from civil society, NGOs and the private sector. The following governments are currently members of the Mountain Partnership. Organization. The Mountain Partnership is supported by a secretariat based at the FAO in Rome, Italy. The secretariat plays a facilitating role, connecting institutions and helping members develop joint activities to protect mountain regions. Work. The work of the Mountain Partnership is spread out among four pillars, namely: advocacy, communications, brokering initiatives and capacity development . The Mountain Partnership works to bring global attention to achieving sustainable development in mountain regions and to promote the inclusion of mountain issues in United Nations declarations and other international documents. Members also engage in disseminating awareness with regards to challenges faced by mountain peoples and environments. Furthermore, the Mountain Partnership’s role is to “facilitate contacts between countries and institutions and creating conditions for partnerships, technical cooperation and resource mobilization at all levels”. The scope of the Mountain Partnership is for members to cooperate in order to facilitate, promote and implement initiatives at all levels. The Mountain Partnership’s  main principles are “participation of all members, accountability, responsiveness, consensus, transparency and flexibility”. Its Secretariat is crucial for the creation of an enabling environment for main actors to cooperate towards the obtainment of common aims. In 2012, its members lobbied for sustainable mountain development to be included in The Future We Want, the final outcome document of the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, resulting in the inclusion of three paragraphs relating to mountains. The partnership also encourages the development of policies and laws that give local mountain communities a voice in decision-making and organizes conferences, training sessions , workshops and communications materials on sustainable development in mountain areas worldwide. On 11–13 December 2017, the Food and Agriculture Organization hosted the Fifth Global Meeting of the Mountain Partnership during which more than two hundred members participated. For this meeting, members renewed their commitments to protect mountains and their environments, to better the life of mountain peoples and to empower them. In addition, a four-year Governance and Strategy and two-year work plan were endorsed. Thanks to advocacy efforts of the Mountain Partnership members, mountains are mentioned in three targets under two of the 17 goals issued by the  Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals in its outcome document.