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Closing Statement

Dear Mountain Forum members,

On behalf of the organizing committee of the Namche Conference, I would like to thank all of you who have contributed to the "People, Park, and Mountain Tourism" e-Consultations. First, and foremost: Ujol Sherchan of ICIMOD, the anonymous meta-moderator who has worked overtime at the switchboard, keeping this event on track. And thanks are also due to Dr. James Gabriel Campbell, director of ICIMOD, for agreeing on short notice to sponsor this event.

Beau Beza, Dr. Khadga Basnet, and Dr. Andreas Ottitsch: thank you for your capable stewardship of Sessions I, III, and IV. And of course, thanks and congratulations to the dozens of Mountain Forum members whose thoughtful and provocative contributions will help us jump-start the dialogue four weeks from now at Namche.

In the next few days, we will be posting syntheses of the four sessions of these e-Consultations. These syntheses, along with a list of questions and proposals for further discussion will be distributed to all participants in the Namche Conference. The ensuing debates will be summarized and included, along with the archives of the e-Consultations and texts of all presentations, in the CD-ROM proceedings to be published by the United Nations University (UNU) this autumn.

Once again, thank you all for your enthusiastic participation, and we look forward to meeting some of you next month in Namche!

Seth Sicroff

Namche Conference organizer