Sustainable Mountain Development Summit (SMDS) 2022

Sustainable Mountain Development Summit (SMDS)- Relevance for UPSC Exam

GS Paper 3: Environment- Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation.

Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change attended the inaugural session of Sustainable Mountain Development Summit-XI, (SMDS-XI) being held at Leh, Ladakh UT from 10-12 October, 2022.

About: The Sustainable Mountain Development Summit (SMDS) is a flagship annual event of Integrated Mountain Initiative (IMI), a civil society-led forum working across the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR).
- Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) comprises 10 mountain states, two union territories and four hill districts.
- Every year 3-5 salient themes engaging the immediate attention of and relevant to the mountains and hills are taken up for threadbare discussion and debate.
- Conclusions and recommendations emerging from this exercise are pursued by IMI subsequently for actionable output.
Components: In addition to the central event, two integral components of the Sustainable Mountain Development Summit (SMDS) include-
- The Mountain Legislators’ Meet (MLM) and
- The Indian Himalayan Youth Summit.
Theme: The theme for SMDS-XI is ‘Harnessing tourism for sustainable mountain development’.
Focus Area: The main focus of the SMDS 2022 summit is to reduce the negative impacts of tourism while harnessing its positive contributions to building climate and socio-ecological resilience and sustainability.
Participation: Each summit had 200-300 participants, representing a diverse mix of policymakers, eminent scientists, researchers, academics, research and educational institutions, government representatives, legislators, etc.

SMDS	THEMATIC FOCUS
SMDS-I (2011), Nainital	Hydropower, Adaptation measures under Climate Change, Rural Tourism, Community forestry
SMDS-II (2012), Gangtok	Water, Forests & Communities, Mountain Livelihoods
SMDS-III (2013), Kohima	Forests, Water: Rivers, streams & springs, Mountain agriculture
SMDS-IV (2015) , Itanagar	Disaster Risk Reduction, Mountain Agriculture, Forests
SMDS-V (2016), Leh	Water Security, Skills for development in the mountains
SMDS-VI (2017), Aizawl	Climate Change & Sustainable Mountain Cities
SMDS-VII (2018), Solan	Well-being of Next Generation of Farmers in the Indian Himalayan Region
SMDS-VIII (2019), Shillong	Livelihood & Entrepreneurship for Youth