Organised by Euromontana, the Government of Catalonia and CREAF, the event will build on the 2050 vision for mountain areas articulated during the previous European Mountain Convention held in Calabria in 2022, and will focus on how to make mountain economies more sustainable, resilient and prosperous.

Mountain economies are based on economic sectors that are the beating heart of mountain areas, provide employment to mountain communities and essential ecosystem services to the society at large, and are often embedded in territorial identities and values. However, these value chains face a number of economic, social and environmental challenges, exacerbated by the geographical constraints of mountain areas. The XIII European Mountain Convention will be an opportunity to explore and identify solutions and pathways to overcome some of these challenges.

What to expect? Interactive discussions on how to overcome the challenges and seize the opportunities of mountain areas are a staple of the European Mountain Conventions, and the programme will feature several interactive workshops aimed at finding solutions to a range of issues, including:

• How to bring more value to mountain agricultural products?
• From raw materials to processing: how to bring the secondary sector back into mountain territories?
• How to tap into the potential of digitalization for mountain economies?
• How to foster entrepreneurship?
• Working with nature: can nature be a business partner?
• Working for nature: how to quantify and remunerate ecosystem services from agro-pastoral activities?
• What makes mountain communities tick? Is it only about access to services?
• Overcoming barriers to attractiveness: how to tackle housing and access to land?
• Beyond the local: how to take advantage of rural-urban linkages to build prosperous and resilient mountain economies?