A meeting of mountain representatives from far corners of the globe ended a hollow exercise. Was this the way to lobby for the world's highlands?
In the last week of February, some 120 academics, bureaucrats and a sprinkling of activists gathered at the International Potato Center in Lima to try and flag attention to the special development needs of the world's highland communities. However, the poorly organised conference did not even add up to the sum of its parts.
The "funding sources" had asked the Woodlands Mountain Institute of West Virginia (recently re-christened 'The Mountain Institute') to convene the meeting. The Institute's organisers confessed that they had never organised an event of this kind before, and it showed. The selection of participants was uninspired, the paper presentations were disappointing, and, most importantly, a symbiosis did not occur among those gathered.
The participants, however, found their feet despite the organisational stumbling blocks and by the last day had even managed to adopt wide-ranging recommendations for appropriate development of mountain areas. The organisers were pleased.