ICIMOD-MENRIS NEW CGIAR-CSI MEMBER

CGIAR-CSI welcome to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), new member of the CGIAR-CSI network

The CGIAR-CSI on the 31th of October, signed a MOU with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), based in Kathmandu, Nepal, as a formal basis for further collaboration and to provide a platfom to encourage the sharing of experiences and learning in spatial information and applications for sustainable development, and establishing ICIMOD as a full member of the CGIAR-CSI.

Many thanks to Basantha Shrestha (Head of MENRIS) and Dr. Gabriel Campbell (DG) for pursuing and facilitating this collaboration

In October 2005, ICIMOD was invited to become a member of the CGIAR-CSI, by the membership at the Annual Meeting, held in Nairobi, Kenya. Since then there has been continuing dialogue between the two organizations in building co-operation. Both ICIMOD and CGIAR-CSI are considered important partners within the UN-led initiatives promoting spatial information such as UNSDI and UNGIWG, and adopting and promoting spatial data infrastructure capacity building as members of the FAO-led GeoNetwork.

The ICIMOD and CGIAR-CSI GeoNetwork Portals are both now synchronized to provide seamless access to each other's online geospatial metadata records, allowing for the search and discovery, and in some cases, online download, of a rich trove of geospatial data for sustainable development

ICIMOD, established in 1983 as a regional research and development agency, has been working towards sustainable mountain development in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region and its mission is to help promote the development of an environmentally and economically sound mountain ecosystem and to improve the living standards of mountain populations in the HKH region.

ICIMOD regional member countries include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan. In pursuing its mandate, ICIMOD works mainly at the interface between research and development and acts as a facilitator for generating new mountain-specific knowledge of relevance to sustainable mountain development

ICIMOD, through its Mountain Environment and Natural Resources Information System (MENRIS) Programme is promoting spatial information and applications to its regional member countries through a network of partner institutions to support sustainable mountain development planning and decision making at the local, national and regional level.