Look to the Mountains

By Hilmi Toros

If you are concerned about loss of water and biodiversity, look up to the mountains.

For, thereon lies the origin of major rivers such as the Nile and the Rio Grande (“Water Towers,” they call them), streams of drinking water for the world below and the wealth of global of biodiversity. Staple foods including potato and sorghum originated there and were later brought downhill.

And also thereon lie problems grave enough to be of concern to the World Summit on Sustainable Development. The message from the summit is: take care of the mountains and their caretakers, the mountain people. Sustainability below is intimately linked to conditions above, according to documents presented at the Johannesburg Summit.

The summit is also launching an initiative called “International Partnership for Sustainable Development of Mountain Areas,” portrayed as a voluntary umbrella championed by the FAO, UNEP, the Swiss government as well as a broad spectrum of various NGOs. They say to be effective, scattered action need to be united.

The aim is to overcome past and present neglect -- if not, as one participant remarked, “move mountains”.

In a year that the United Nations has designated as the International Year of the Mountains, studies reveal both the importance and degradation of the mountain people and their ecosystems.

“From a distance some mountains can look like a giant piles of rock,” notes a document presented to the Johannesburg Summit. “But up close, they are teeming with life. Because of their extraordinary range of elevations and climates, biodiversity is among the highest of all eco-regions in the world, including tropical rain forests.”

Yet in mountain areas still rich with resources, mountain people are among the poorest, because mountains are viewed as “assets” to be exploited and controlled by “outsiders”. Mountain areas face increasing marginalisation, economic decline and environmental degradation, according to U.N. studies.

Scientists also believe that mountains are barometers of global warming, and climate change. It is also pointed out that mountain glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates that could lead to disruption of water supplies or increased flooding.

Mass urbanization is further decimating mountain areas. Some rivers have already been diverted from their natural paths.

Some 700 million, about 10 percent of the global population, live in mountain areas, which cover a quarter of the world’s surface, and 350 million of the world’s 800 million undernourished are mountain people.

The initiative launched at the summit is also attempting to seek solutions to mountain people falling victim to wars and drug trafficking, prevalent in many mountain zones. In 1999, 23 of 27 major armed conflicts in the world were fought in mountain regions, the United Nations reports.

“Putting power back in the hands of mountain people is one important step towards alleviating their poverty,” says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), designated as the lead U.N. agency to implement Rio Summit commitments on mountains.

Despite past neglect, summit participants held hope for the future, pointing to the belated “discovery” of an old problem that is gaining new attention. Italy said it would participate fully with the new partnership initiative, joining its neighbour Switzerland’s pioneering efforts. Both nations share the Alps, also displaying that the problems of mountain people are not just confined to the South.

"In fact, trumpets one U.N. document: "We are all mountain people."