Promoting innovations for sustainable development in mountain areas (PRIMA)



Contract partner: UNEP - United Nations Environment Programme - Vienna Country: Entwicklungsländer, unspezifisch Funding amount: € 300.000,00 Project start: 01.11.2021 End: 30.04.2024

Short Description:

Overall goal


PRIMA’s overall objective is to promote collaboration among partners and across mountain regions on innovative approaches that provide mutual benefits and enhance the effectiveness of actions towards inclusive sustainable mountain development.


Expected results


1: Evidence-based innovative approaches are published and widely disseminated through the journal Mountain Research and Development's (MRD) open access platform

2: MRD talks regularly take place to foster the exchange and learning between practitioners, researchers and policymakers about innovative approaches and their potential for broader application

3: Successful realization of a first Mountain Innovation Fair facilitating partnerships between users and providers of innovative approaches

4: One promising approach is awarded to be adapted and applied in other mountain regions


Target group / Beneficiaries


A minimum of 450 stakeholders are targeted to actively gain information about innovative approaches for sustainable mountain development. Therefore, PRIMA strives to involve 170 beneficiaries (policymakers, NGO and community-based organization (CBO) representatives and researchers) to actively contribute to or attend MRD talks. In addition, 200 interested stakeholders are planned to view the versions of the talks provided on MRD’s platform. Moreover, PRIMA intends that at least 80 beneficiaries (CBOs, NGOs, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and impact investors) actively participate in the Mountain Innovation Fair.

The Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) of the University of Berne/Switzerland will be an important implementation partner in this project providing key expertise, innovative content and advisory, support in the dissemination of such content and in organising key events, both virtual and physical.

CDE is Switzerland’s centre of excellence for sustainable development and one of the University of Bern’s strategic research centres.


Activities


• Collect and review innovative approaches for inclusive sustainable development in mountain areas in form of manuscripts

• Publish Mountain Development papers on MRD’s open access platform widely and disseminate through various news channels and social media

• Design an attractive online dialogue format for exchange and learning about innovative approaches and their potential for broader application

• Conduct MRD talks and conduct a survey among participants of MRD talks for collecting feedback and advancing the format of the online dialogue

• Target SMEs and grassroot initiatives and assess submissions for Mountain Innovation Fair along transparent criteria to design and organize a Mountain Innovation Fair

• Foster concrete action learning among users and providers through various interactive formats at the Mountain Innovation Fair & create podcasts for dissemination on MRD’s open access platform

• Organize Mountain Innovation Award and award prize in form of seed money to a tandem of partners for a convincing presentation of rationale, approach, and prospect to apply their innovative approach to another mountain region

• Facilitate replication and adjustment of the awarded approach to a different location taking into account the specific needs

• Organize feedback loops with participants of Mountain Innovation Fair and Mountain Innovation Award and draw preliminary lessons learnt including their views on the potentials of innovations for broader application


Context


Mountain regions are home to more than 940 million people worldwide of whom more than two thirds live in rural or peri-urban areas. With new challenges, also triggered by global change, they are seeking new ways to overcome poverty and multidimensional disparities by diversifying their livelihoods. The pivotal importance of Sustainable Mountain Development (SMD) was first recognized politically at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and included in Chapter 13 of the Agenda 21 (so called “Mountain Agenda”). At present, mountains are included in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 6 and 15) and Aichi Biodiversity Targets 2011–2020 (Target 14). The United Nations General Assembly acknowledges the critical need to focus on the specific challenges, as well as opportunities provided in mountain areas to achieve the SDGs and targets relating to poverty, hunger, sustainable agriculture, climate change and gender equality. In addition, several countries (e.g. Georgia, Uganda, Italy, France) have put policies or strategies in place that specifically focus on sustainable mountain development. PRIMA will seek synergies with several of these networks. The overall outcome is intended to provide for practitioners and other beneficiaries to be informed about innovative approaches for sustainable mountain development and become encouraged to form partnerships for applying these in other mountain regions.

project number 2674-00/2020
source of funding OEZA
sector Umweltschutz allgemein
tied
modality Project-type interventions
marker Environment: 2, Climate change adaptation: 1
  • Policy marker: are used to identify, assess and facilitate the monitoring of activities in support of policy objectives concerning gender equality, aid to environment, participatory development/good governance, trade development and reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health. Activities targeting the objectives of the Rio Conventions include the identification of biodiversity, climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, and desertification.
    • 1= policy is a significant objective of the activity
    • 2= policy is the principal objective of the activity
  • Donor/ source of funding: The ADA is not only implementing projects and programmes of the Austrian Development Cooperation , but also projects funded from other sources and donors such as
    • AKF - Foreign Disaster Fund of the Austrian federal government
    • BMLFUW - Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water
    • EU - Funds of the European Commission
    • Others - various other donors are listed in ADA’s annual business report.
  • Type of Aid – Aid modalities: classifies transfers from the donor to the first recipient of funds such as budget support, core contributions and pooled programmes and funds to CSOs and multilateral organisations, project-type interventions, experts and other technical assistance, scholarships and student costs in donor countries, debt relief, administrative costs and other in-donor expenditures.
  • Purpose/ sector code: classifies the specific area of the recipient’s economic or social structure, funded by a bilateral contribution.
  • Tied/Untied: Untied aid is defined as loans and grants whose proceeds are fully and freely available to finance procurement from all OECD countries and substantially all developing countries. Transactions are considered tied unless the donor has, at the time of the aid offer, clearly specified a range of countries eligible for procurement which meets the tests for “untied” aid.
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