[cid:image001.png@01D70B8A.5B260650]



Dear Mountain Partnership members and friends,



The Donkey Sanctuary<http://www.fao.org/mountain-partnership/members/members-detail/en/c/163847/>, a member of the Mountain Partnership, and World Horse Welfare have recently launched a new initiative: the Working Animal Alliance (WAA). The WAA is a strategic coalition of stakeholders seeking to raise awareness of the contribution working animals make towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).



The WAA believes that the critical contribution working animals provide towards the life of people is largely overlooked, despite spanning several areas of activities, including economic development, fighting poverty, climate change mitigation and the dissemination of diseases. Worldwide, working animals are very frequently one of the most valuable assets that people own: they facilitate income generation, enable resource provision, allow access to education and further gender empowerment.



The Alliance is an informal group of countries, intergovernmental bodies and relevant stakeholders who will focus on emphasizing the crucial contribution of the world’s 200 million working animals towards the livelihood of hundreds of communities. It will take coordinated activities aiming to strengthen synergies across sectors and to support the delivery of the SDGs.



Given the essential role working animals play for communities in mountain regions, the WAA is inviting Mountain Partnership members and friends to consider joining forces as a way forward to meet common objectives.



The Alliance aims to be actively engaged during the following events and in cooperation with the following stakeholders:

  *   UN High Level Political Forum meetings including regional UN Fora;
  *   UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings;
  *   Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030;
  *   Committee on World Food Security;
  *   World Water Week conferences and the World Water Forums; and
  *   the UN Secretary General’s Food System Summit and its preparatory meetings.



It intends to work with countries that have large working animal populations and that are planning to present their the Voluntary National Reviews, to help highlight working animals’ contribution to development reflected in their reports.



Joining the initiative is free.

More information regarding the Alliance can be found at the Alliance’s webpage: www.workinganimalalliance.org<https://www.workinganimalalliance.org/>



Best regards,
The Mountain Partnership Secretariat





The Mountain Partnership is a voluntary alliance of partners dedicated to improving the lives of mountain people

and protecting mountain environments around the world.

www.fao.org/mountain-partnership<http://www.fao.org/mountain-partnership/en/>







________________________________

To unsubscribe from the Mountain-Partnership-L list, click the following link:
&*TICKET_URL(Mountain-Partnership-L,SIGNOFF);

########################################################################

To unsubscribe from the Mountain-Partnership-L list, click the following link:
&*TICKET_URL(Mountain-Partnership-L,SIGNOFF);