Context and Objectives

The expert workshop is organized in the context of the 2024 Albert Mountain Award ceremony. Bringing together practitioners, scientists, and funders, it highlights the activities of one of the awardees, the Albertine Rift Conservation Society (ARCOS). Internationally acknowledged as Africa’s primary mountain hub organization, ARCOS operates a successful nature-based community enterprise programme in mountain regions. From this entry point, wider trends, knowledge gaps, and priorities for action are addressed.

The workshop brings together practitioners, scholars, and funding organizations to share concrete experiences and discuss cross-cutting issues at the intersection of community enterprises, nature-based solutions, and climate resilience. Topics for discussion include synergies and tensions between local and global benefits; opportunities and risks of entrepreneurship and associated financial dynamics; the nature of enabling environments and governance contexts; interlocal cooperation at regional and global levels; and specific sectoral prospects such as in landscape restoration and food systems diversification.

A workshop summary will be submitted as a contribution to the upcoming focus issue “Innovation Pathways to Sustainability in Mountains” of the journal Mountain Research and Development.

Programme

Location: University of Bern – Uni S, Room S201, Schanzeneckstrasse

• 14.00 Welcome and introduction by Dominik Siegrist, KAMF President, and Jörg Balsiger, KAMF/MRI/UNIGE
• 14.15 Keynote inputs, followed by a panel discussion
  • Sam Kanyamibwa & Christian Mukama, ARCOS, Kigali: The Nature Based Community Enterprises Programme
  • Gete Seleke, Water and Land Resources Centre, Ethiopia: Community enterprising in the Living Watersheds Project
  • Stephanie Mansourian, Audemars-Watkins Foundation: Governance trends in landscape restoration
  • Liesbeth Casier, International Institute for Sustainable Development: Financial dimensions
• 16.00 Coffee break
• 16.30 Group discussions to identify best practices, lessons learned, and knowledge gaps
• 17.30 Plenary synthesis & Priorities for action
• 18.00 Closing and networking apéro

Co-Organized By

• King Albert I Memorial Foundation (KAMF)
• Audemars-Watkins Foundation
• Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern
• Mountain Research Initiative (MRI)
• Zoï Environment Network
• Institute for Environmental Governance and Territorial Development, University of Geneva (UNIGE)

Registration

Space is limited – RSVP by 18 September 2024 for the workshop and apéro by emailing joerg.balsiger(at)unige.ch.

Cover image by ARCOS