The 5th edition of the Reading Mountain Festival will take place on December 11th, 2019 all over the Alps in scope of the International Day of the Mountain.  This festival is an opportunity to celebrate Alpine culture through literature and to connect booklovers with the mountains. Event registration for the event is now open online.

On the 28th of October, Austria welcomed its second IUCN Ib Wilderness Area. Hohe Tauern Sulzbach valleys were recognised with this status thanks to their unmodified nature worthy of protection and untouched preservation. Here, the self-determination of nature is promoted and respected for the preservation of this unique ecosystem.

The 6,728-hectare area of the Sulzbach valleys, located in Salzburg's part of the park, is hardly accessible due to its steep rock faces and glaciers. For these reasons, it has never been affected by major human interventions and is now one of the natural treasures of the park conserving its wilderness status. Hence, Hohe Tauern Wilderness Area is the home of many characteristic animals like chamois, ibex, bearded and griffon vultures and golden eagle.

The category Ib IUCN certificate was handed over to Wolfgang Urban, the director of the park, by Andrej Sovnic, the Vice-Chair of IUCN Europe, at the presence of regional and federal Ministers of Sustainable Development and Tourism Maria Hutter and Maria Patek respectively.

This status brings international recognition and confirms the importance of the park.

On December 5th 2019, several Alpine stakeholders will gather in the Regional Nature Park of Chartreuse to exchange their views on the challenges of tourism in Alpine protected areas. The purpose will also be to discuss the opporunities and risks for the parks related to touristic development, against the background of climate change and new forms of outdoor sports. This workshop will also be an opportunity to define any possibility of a new common project regarding these topics.

A spontaneous kick-off

Today, on December 2nd, 2019, the Ministry of Environment of Chile - Carolina Schmidt - is launching the UN Climate Change Conference COP 25 in Madrid. Given that demonstrations in Chile’s capital have not come to an end, Spain offered to host the 25th Climate Change Conference under the motto #TimeForAction one month ago.

The challenge

In Madrid, the representatives of the UN members will focus on the mechanisms that have to be put in place to achieve the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement – that are at the moment far from being achieved. According to the UN, in order to limit global warming to +1,5°C, CO2 emissions should be reduced by 7,6% per year until 2030. However, this is hardly achievable if China, the United States and also Europe do not step back from their current energy policies and production patterns and take severe measures for cutting down CO2 emissions.

It is going to be a long week for the 197 signing countries of the Paris Agreement (2015), especially after the alarming Report of the IPCC, which told us that it is very likely that the limit of +1,5°C will be exceeded between 2030 and 2052 if emissions keep increasing at the current rate.

Is there still hope?

On the wave of the Fridays for future movement, young people are demonstrating all over the world against climate change, calling on their governments for immediate action. A boost to this conference will be given by the intervention of Greta Thunberg who is on her - ecological - way to Madrid.

Learn more about climate change in the Alps:

Climate Change in the Alps: Protected Areas Fight Back

What’s the Alpine School?

The Alpine school is a label that schools interested in an innovative educational approach can adopt after fulfilling certain criteria. These criteria are strongly linked to the approach of education for sustainable development, adapted to mountain specificities. In order to explain the Alpine School and its theoretical background, ALPARC elaborated a promotional video available in 5 languages. 

The choice of the doodling style allowed for flexibility and schematisation that grasped the very nature of the approach of the Alpine School. A lot of attention was paid to details, and inspiration was taken directly from the activities carried out in the Pilot schools and the protected areas working with them. The result is a 2-minute representation of the Alpine School, its main characteristics and objectives. In English and the four Alpine languages, the video is the perfect way to get a first general overview of the Alpine School. The ‘premiere’ of the video took place in the cinema Pathé Chambery (FR) during the project’s final conference in October 2019. The video is available here: What’s the Alpine School?

A Brand-new Website Dedicated to the Alpine School

Even though the YOUrALPS project, which provided the framework for the Alpine School, ended in October, some motivated partners decided to put one last effort into the Alpine School, creating a mini website for it; one of the main outputs of the project. 

Here you can see the result. A simple, intuitive and captivating website presenting the Alpine School, its theoretical basis, its characteristics and all the materials that have been developed around it. The website contains a lot of freely accessible guides to implement outdoor activities within the model of Mountain-oriented Education. The Alpine App and the Alpine Toolkit for outdoor lessons are also available for download and constitute the perfect complement to in-class lessons.