Sustainable Mountain Development Summit (SMDS)

The Sustainable Mountain Development Summit (SMDS) was organized by way of seeking consensus among the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) regarding the creation of a platform where diverse stakeholders working on issues pertinent to mountains could come together to engage in an informed debate on identified themes, to inform and influence policy formulation in respect to the Indian Mountain Region.

The first SMDS-I convened under the aegis of Integrated Mountain Initiative (IMI) was organized with active support from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain (ICIMOD), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, India (GIZ-India) and others. IMI and SMDS thus simultaneously came into existence in May 2011 at Nainital dedicating itself to being a forum for open and informed dialogue amongst all stakeholders of the Indian Himalayan Region States (Task Force, 2010). All SMDS have successfully addressed the needs and issues related to the mountain and hill states of India. The themes and papers presented have been at the core of implementing certain concrete and objective policies.