The VII international scientific conference "Sustainable development of mountainous territories in terms of global changes" has finished in Vladikavkaz. Over 300 scientists discussed legal, economic and humanitarian issues and the results of possible problems.
"Mountains and elevations are 51% of our total area," research fellow of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yuri Badenkov said: "The Caucasus is only one percent of it, but it is famous all
over the world".
The status of the forum was of such high priority that "the conclusions and decisions made during the work will be a basis for our mountain territory development programmes," the prime-minister of North Ossetia Nikolai Khlyntsov said.
The idea of the forum was conceived by the International Innovative Scientific and Technological Center on Mountain Territories Development in Vladikavkaz.
The key event of the conference was the signing of an agreement between the Center and the Academies of Sciences of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Abkhazia and Kyrgyzstan. The aim of the agreement is cooperation in research on sustainable development of the mountainous territories of the Caucasus region and the use of these results in practice.
The participants of the forum discussed several questions, such as how to use effectively the resources of the mountainous territories, how to implement the experience in a concrete area, how to preserve biological and cultural diversity and how to react to global climate change and nature disasters. The director of the International Center, Vladimir Vagin, thinks that the scientific potentials of mountainous countries should be united.
A corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, Ramis Mamedov, said that "after the collapse of the Soviet Union the mountainous regions suffered the most. I hope that our agreement will broaden the limits of our possibilities."
