Les Alpins

To promote and protect the rights of mountain minorities, to defend the right to self-determination of mountain peoples, and to preserve and guarantee the natural foundations of life, the efficiency of the natural balance, the beauty of landscapes, the diversity and richness of cultural heritage in mountain regions, as well as to ensure sustainable development of mountain regions. From Geneva, the association is committed to: defending and promoting all human rights, considering them to be totally inseparable and indivisible, defending and promoting all economic, social and cultural rights, and in particular the right to development, fighting against the impunity of their multiple violations, helping communities, groups and social movements that are victims of these violations to make their voices heard and to assert their rights, ensuring the respect, maintenance and promotion of the cultural and social identity of the population living in the Alps, supporting the efforts of parliaments and governments of states and regions of the Alpine arc, including their working groups, the Council of Europe, the European Union and other competent governmental and non-governmental organizations that also pursue the objectives of sustainable development. Guaranteeing access to fundamental resources, such as housing and environmentally respectful economic development, as well as promoting mutual understanding and collaborative relationships between the population of the Alps and extra-Alpine regions, ensuring a thrifty and rational use of land and a healthy and harmonious development of the territory, thanks to a complete identification and evaluation of the needs for the use of Alpine space, prospective and integrated planning, and harmonization of the resulting standards, taking into account natural risks, preventing overconcentration and under-density, and ensuring the preservation and restoration of natural living environments, maintaining air quality favorable to human, plant and animal life, reducing quantitative and qualitative damage to the soil, conserving the natural quality of water and hydrosystems, ensuring the protection, management and, if necessary, restoration of nature and landscapes in order to guarantee the sustainable functioning of ecosystems, the preservation of fauna and flora and their habitats, the power of regeneration and long-term production of natural heritage, as well as the diversity, originality and beauty of nature and landscapes as a whole, ensuring, in the general interest, the conservation, management and promotion of traditional rural landscapes and site-adapted and environmentally compatible agriculture, while taking into account economic constraints in the Alpine space, ensuring the preservation, strengthening and restoration of forest functions, ensuring the harmonization of tourist and leisure activities with ecological and social requirements, while limiting tourist and leisure activities that are harmful to the environment, in particular by designating non-developable zones, reducing nuisances and risks in the inter-Alpine and trans-Alpine transport sector, so that they are bearable for humans, fauna and flora as well as for their living environment and habitats, imposing a production, distribution and use of energy that respects nature and the landscape and is compatible with the environment, and encouraging energy-saving measures, ensuring waste collection, recycling and treatment systems adapted to the specific topographic, geological and climatic needs of the Alpine space, while aiming to reduce the volume of waste produced. The association is non-profit and does not aim to make a profit. The association is politically neutral, non-denominational and non-sectarian. The association may accept any object, in donations, legacies or loans, from third-party moral or physical entities and may make donations to organizations, institutions or individuals who conceive, develop, implement or participate in any way in projects in the association's fields of activity. The association may acquire real estate and take a stake in any company or organization that contributes to the realization of its social purpose.