ENVIRONMENT: Mountains Imposing but not Immutable

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Oct 23 2002 (IPS) - Yes, mountains too are vulnerable. And the first global assessment of mountain ecosystems provides a glimpse of just how.

"Climate change, agricultural encroachment and infrastructure development were found to be the three biggest dangers to mountains," Mark Collins, director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) told media representatives at the release of a report in London Wednesday. Some of the other causes were found to be natural hazards, fire and human conflict.

The report Mountain Watch by UNEP-WCMC has been prepared in time for the Global Mountain Summit to take place in Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia from October 29 to November 1. This is officially the Year of the Mountains.

The report is expected to lead to what is being called the Bishkek Mountain Platform that will aid to provide a global framework of action on mountains in this century.

The meeting at Bishkek is expected to strengthen a Network of Mountain Developing States (MODS) launched at the world summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg, and a new international partnership for sustainable development of mountain regions.. An estimated 6,000 to 7,000 participants are expected at the summit. Several heads of state are likely to join the summit meeting.

The Mountain Watch report shows mountains being tamed around the world by farming and grazing. Almost half of Africa’s mountain regions are now "under the hoof or plough" followed by South America, the report says. In Africa an estimated 10 per cent of mountain areas have been converted to cropland and 34 per cent turned over to grazing, the survey shows. This leads to soil erosion and flooding, the report says.

Mountains stand as they were meant to in Greenland, and in North and Central America where only an estimated 14 per cent has been converted for agricultural use, of which 9 per cent is for cattle, sheep and other domestic livestock, and five per cent is for crops. But many of these areas rich in biodiversity are now threatened, the report says.

"A quarter of the land area of earth is covered by mountains, a fifth of the world’s population lives in mountains," Collins said at the launch of the report. But mountains regions are a disproportionately high area of conflicts, Collins said. Mountain communities are often marginalised and the languages of the people are dying, he said. "In the rockies of North America many American Indian languages have been lost."

It is not all bad news, Collins said. "The Austrian Alps are benefiting, they have more species than they used to," he said. In Switzerland, the forest cover has been "increased 60 per cent to protect the people from avalanches and flooding." In many mountain areas terrace farming is helping stabilise soils, the report says.

But it is mismanagement of the mountains that was behind the severe flooding in Europe this year, said Andrei Iatsenia, UNEP’s mountain programme coordinator. What happens in the mountains matters not just to people living in them but to the hundreds of millions living downstream, he said. Most immediately that raises the question of water sharing "which will be the biggest source of conflict in this century," he said.

"Mountains are the water towers of the world," UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer said in a statement at the launch of the report. "We must act to conserve them for the benefit of mountain people and for the benefit of humankind."

The "global snapshot" as Collins called it is the first map-based assessment of environmental change in mountain areas and the implications for sustainable development.

The snapshot presents a picture of factors like air pressure and oxygen availability, people and population profiles, plant and biological diversity, cultural diversity, water and forest resources and cloud forests. "But this is only a preliminary report," Collins said. A detailed mountain atlas is being prepared for launch next year.

The early snapshot has been a revealing one. Among other things it shows:

– South America’s mountain areas are particularly vulnerable to destructive earthquakes, with about 88 per cent mountain area deemed at risk.

– Almost a quarter of mountain areas globally could be "highly impacted" by infrastructure development including roads, mining and power and pipelines by 2035.

– The mountains of Greenland are expected to be hardest hit by global warming, and 98 per cent of its mountains would suffer severe climate change by 2055.

– Africa’s mountain regions are being hardest hit by multiple pressures including conversion of forests and other mountain terrain to grazing land, fire and violent human conflict.

– The risk of serious violent conflict is higher in mountain regions. The highest level of mountain land that has witnessed war is in Africa, where 67 per cent of such land has been affected by high intensity conflict.

– Norway holds the last population of wild mountain reindeer in Europe, but they are now losing their ranges more rapidly than at any time in history.

– The entire ice cap of Kilimanjaro may completely disappear in less than 20 years if the rate of current loss due to global warming continues. Glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca in Peru have been shrinking since at least the seventies, amounting to a 75 per cent decrease of area over 25 years.

– Rapid ice melting is leading to formation of glacial lakes in the Himalayas that could burst and cause catastrophic flooding downstream.

The report pioneers what it calls "mountain science’. It explores the complex relationships between upper and lower watersheds, mountain forests and grasslands, and between mountain people and lowland urban dwellers. The report will be used to suggest solutions of upstream-downstream environmental service agreements and contracts for mountain ecosystems.

ENVIRONMENT: Mountains Imposing but not Immutable

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Oct 23 2002 (IPS) - Yes, mountains too are vulnerable. And the first global assessment of mountain ecosystems provides a glimpse of just how.
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