International Mountain Day 2025

On 11 December 2025, Mountain Wilderness International (MWI) celebrated IMD with a webinar entitled: “Glaciers: A Story Worth Preserving”, organised by Sabine Rentschler, Vice President of MWI, and Laura Moro, Governing Board Member, and featuring speakers from various fields, ranging from the arts to the scientific community.

The webinar was held within the framework of the Reading Mountains Festival, organised every year by the Alpine Convention, an international treaty for the protection and sustainable development of the Alps. This Festival is held under the aegis of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Mountain Partnership, whose members include MWI.

After a short introduction to our NGO’s Shrinking Glaciers Project and a brief description of the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation 2025, designated by the UN, the webinar got underway with the first speaker, Franco Borgogno, journalist and researcher, as well as Board Member of MW Italy, who gave a presentation on Plastics and microplastics pollution in mountains: first data and glacier impacts. Franco briefly outlined the Clean Alp project and spoke about the significant impact that plastics and microplastics have on glaciers. They are linked to fossil fuel extraction activities for plastic production, to gases released by plastics dispersed in the environment and to the acceleration of ice and snow melting.

The second speaker was Riccardo Scotti, freelance PhD in Earth Sciences, scientific director of Servizio Glaciologico Lombardo (Glaciological Service of Lombardy), a nonprofit organisation, with a presentation on Glaciers in Lombardy (Central Italian Alps) threatened by the climate crisis. Riccardo showed the retreat timelapse of several glaciers, including the Mandrone tongue of the Adamello Glacier (below) and raised the alarm about the speed at which glaciers are disappearing.

In the region Lombardy, 126 glaciers have vanished since 1991 and with the business-as-usual scenario, i.e. with a 4-degree increase of temperature, the three major glaciers in Lombardy would completely disappear by the end of the century, whereas remaining below the 2-degree threshold of the Paris Agreement would allow some glaciers to survive and, ultimately, the human race as well.

The floor was then given to the world of art, with Cyane Findji, an artist from Finland who is working on a short documentary entitled Flowers of the Glacier (2026) in duo with Myriam Gras. The film brings together three generations of women scientists whose paths cross with the rediscovery of an overlooked herbarium in the Tarfala Research Station, amid the shifting post‑glacial ecologies of Arctic Sweden. It is an inspiring story of resilience and care, and of how we can learn to support each other in order to cope with the environmental crisis.

The next speaker was Borja Antolin Tomás, PhD holder in Himalayan Geology and President of MW Spain, with his presentation The nightmare of Trutat. The end of the Pyrenean glaciers, in which he took the 19th-century mountaineer and naturalist Eugène Trutat on a journey into the future. Borja focussed on the changes in Pyrenean glaciers, especially in the three major remaining glaciers and drew some conclusions: promote mountain education among younger generations, oppose construction of new cable cars and ski slopes, support local sustainable tourism projects as well as reduce GHG emissions.

The list of speakers ended with Mathieu Crétet, Member of the board of MW France and Project manager for protected areas, who dealt with The ambitious goal of strong protection for French glaciers: a case study at La Meije. Mathieu described post-glacial ecosystems and focused on the French context, depicting how the work of the scientific community and associations, including MW France, led President Macron to promise strong protection for glaciers and the drafting of two national strategies on biodiversity and protected areas both by 2030. The presentation ended with the example of La Meije, aimed at highlighting the importance of strong protection for glaciers.

After a short excerpt from Walter Bonatti’s “The Mountains of My Life”, Sabine and Laura opened the Q&A session, which was very animated and full of questions for all speakers.

The webinar was very well attended and featured a lively debate. For those of you who missed it, a video recording will be available soon.