The Mountain Cloud Forest Initiative - Creating Cloud Forest Champions
The Mountain Cloud Forest Initiative is the result of a partnership between the IUCN, the UNEP and its World Conservation Monitoring Centre and UNESCO, to promote the following vision:
A future where mountain communities and downstream users value and protect cloud forests for their unique plant and animal species, their role in supplying clean water, and where the global community recognises their value as sensitive indicators of climate change. |
Objectives of the Mountain Cloud Forest Initiative:
-
Obtain recognition and resources for the conservation and management
of the world's cloud forests at the international and national levels.
- Promote strengthened landscape-scale and ecosystem-based
approaches for the conservation and management of cloud forests, including
management
of protected areas and forest restoration.
- Increase the capacity and effectiveness of the diverse local groups managing and conserving cloud forest, building sustainable livelihoods and regional benefits.
The Mountain Cloud Forest Initiative will produce its first report, the Cloud Forest Agenda, on the status of cloud forests and regional action priorities at the CoP 7 meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in February 2004.
Partners
UNEP and the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre.
Since 1997 UNEP-WCMC has been
producing information on cloud forests for awareness raising and conservation
initiatives in partnership with the Netherlands Committee for IUCN , IUCN,
WWF International and the UNESCO IHP.
IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management.
The IUCN CEM
provides expert guidance on integrated ecosystem approaches to the management
of natural and modified ecosystems. The CEM is currently establishing
a network of demonstration sites on the ecosystem-based approach to management,
including cloud forest sites.
UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme and International Hydrological
Programme.
The World Network of Biosphere Reserves under UNESCO's
Man and Biosphere (MAB) Programme contains 425 sites, of which over
40% are located in mountain areas. The Mountain Cloud Forest Initiative
will develop case studies of successful cloud forest conservation at some
of these sites. The UNESCO International
Hydrological Programme promotes integrated management of watersheds,
including research in cloud forest areas.
The inter-relationships between the activities of the Mountain Cloud Forest Initiative are:
Search