General Assembly Finland 2006

Nominations for the IMCG Main Board

On our General Assembly in Finland we have to elect a new IMCG Main Board. In order to guarantee an effective democratic election process involving all members, nominations have to be submitted to the Secretariat before 1 July 2006, so that ballots can be sent out in time to allow email and postal voting.

Please send your nomination (incl. a short description of your backgrounds, your activities in, and vision on mire conservation) to the Secretariat.

On the IMCG General Assembly on Thursday 27 July 2006 in Eerikkilä ( Finland ) only a limited number of IMCG members can be present, and only limited time will be available. Therefore we will arrange the discussions and decisions largely by internet and (e)mail, like we have done with the 2002 and 2004 General Assemblies.

This Newsletter contains the agenda for this Assembly (that will be available on our website as well) and in the beginning of July we will produce a Newsletter containing the full documents for the Assembly and all information on how the voting per email or snailmail will be done. We will furthermore open a special site on our website where all drafts of discussion papers will be made available.

Therefore: provide the IMCG secretariat with additional (minor) agenda points and submit your background papers, concrete proposals, contributions for discussion, nominations for the IMCG Main Board etc. until 1 July 2006. Sent the material in as soon as possible – the sooner the better – so that we can arrange the democratic procedures in a smooth way.

The agenda of the IMCG General Assembly is as follows:

1.                    Opening and Welcome

2.                    Minutes of the General Assembly of 26 September 2004 in Paarl (see IMCG Newsletter 2004/4)

3.                    Balance sheet and the statement of profit and loss

4.                    Biennial report on the state of affairs in the IMCG and on its policy, including an evaluation of the Action Plan 2002 - 2006

5.                    IMCG Action Plan 2006 - 2010

6.                    Membership fee

7.                    Election of the Main Board

8.                    Conference resolutions

9.                    Information on next venue 2008 in Georgia ; agreement on venue 2008

10.                 Any Other Business

IMCG Resolutions

Submit your draft resolutions!

The IMCG General Assembly in Finland 2006 will again discuss and adopt resolutions. To streamline the procedure, IMCG members are requested to submit their draft resolution timely, i.e. as soon as possible, to the IMCG secretariat. This will enable to circulate the draft resolutions among the Main Board, to publish the necessary background information in the IMCG Newsletter of July 2006, and to put the drafts on our website so that everybody can send reactions (to the IMCG Secretariat).

Draft resolutions should identify the apparatus and bodies to which the resolution has to be directed or sent. Examples (phrasing and content) of resolutions can be found on the IMCG website (www.imcg.net/imcgdocu.htm).

Resolutions are not always taken at heart by the governments they are addressed to. Yet resolutions remain a strong tool to influence government policies, the more so with the increasing strength of IMCG on the global peatland front.

Meeting IPS/IMCG

Associated with the IMCG General Assembly in Finland there will be the annual meeting between the International Peat Society (IPS) and the IMCG to discuss global peatland issues, joint projects (e.g. the new Mires and Peat journal that will be officially launched at that occasion) and further joint initiatives.

The meeting will take place on Friday July 28, 2006, in Hotel Meripuisto in Espoo (half an hour drive west from Helsinki airport).

Members who are interested to participate, please contact the IMCG secretariat: joosten@uni-greifswald.de

Meeting CoCoGAP

Possibly, also a meeting of the Coordinating Committee for Global Action for Peatlands (CoCoGAP) of the Ramsar Convention will be held associated with the IMCG General Assembly in Finland . The meeting is preliminarily planned for Saturday July 29, 2006, in Hotel Meripuisto in Espoo (half an hour drive west from Helsinki airport).

For more information contact Tobias Salathe: salathe@ramsar.org