Posted on 27-10-2002

Tallest Peaks Danger
By Jim Lobe

LONDON, England, October 24, 2002 (ENS) - The world's mountains and
communities who have lived on them for centuries are increasingly under
siege by a variety of environmental, demographic, and economic threats,
according to a report released Wednesday by the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP) and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre.

Global warming, which is melting mountain glaciers and snowfields all over
the world at an astonishing rate, is perhaps the leading threat, but the
encroachment of agriculture, roads, and mining activities at ever-higher
elevations is also a growing worry, according to the report, entitled
"Mountain Watch," and based in part on satellite data showing the pace and
intensity of change on what amounts to 24 percent of the world's land
surface. "Our reverence for these unique wilderness areas has been partly
based on their remoteness, their inaccessibility," according to Klaus
Toefper, UNEP's executive director. "But this new report highlights how,
like so many parts of the world, some of these last wild areas are fast
disappearing in the face of agriculture, infrastructure development, and
other creeping impacts. "Behind all these is the specter of climate change,
which is already taking its toll on the glaciers and changing plant and
animal communities in high-altitude areas," he said.

Under pressure from climate change, the entire ice cap of Mount
Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak, is expected to disappear in less than
20 years with potentially catastrophic consequences for the
irrigation-dependent farming communities which have lived on its slopes for
centuries. Similarly, glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru and
elsewhere in the Andes have shrunk some 75 percent over the past 25 years
and are also moving toward extinction, while rapid ice melt in the
Himalayas is likely to cause major flooding downstream. "These impacts are
not just regrettable, but threaten the health and well-being of us all,"
noted Toepfer, who spoke at a press conference in London. "Mountains are
the water towers of the world, from where the world's mighty rivers spring.
We must act to conserve them for the benefit of mountain people [and]
humankind," he added.

Aside from climate change, the biggest threats to mountain ecologies and
communities include agricultural encroachment and infrastructure
development, according to Mark Collins, director of the World Conservation
Monitoring Centre (WCMC). Driving those changes are several causes,
including population and economic pressures that are driving poor people
into higher and more remote areas for farming or grazing domestic
livestock. Those movements mean that more mountain forests are being
cleared, threatening the survival of unique ecosystems and, in many cases,
accelerating erosion and soil loss. In addition, the exhaustion of mines in
developed countries, the world's seemingly inexhaustible appetite for oil
and gas, and the easing of restrictions on foreign investment in many poor
countries have resulted in the construction of new mines, pipelines, roads
and other infrastructure in places that were relatively untouched until
very recently. Those activities have translated into sustained contact
between many indigenous highland communities that were relatively isolated
but whose livelihoods and cultures are increasingly threatened by the
influx of people from low lying areas. "The demand for mountain riches -
timber, minerals, water, tourism facilities - is more often driven by
urban, lowland populations and industry than by highland communities,"
according to Olivia Bennett of the London based Panos Institute, which
publishes oral testimonies by mountain communities from across the world.
"Mountain people are the custodians of diverse - sometimes unique -
environments, essential to the survival of the global ecosystem. Further
erosion of their ability to care for those assets will be the world's loss,
not just theirs," she said.

Apart from Greenland, the region whose mountains appear to be the most
pristine is North and Central America where only an estimated 14 percent
has been converted to agriculture or livestock, according to the report.
But almost half of Africa's mountain regions are estimated to have been put
under the plow or the hoof, while South American mountains are close
behind. Parts of the Caucasus, California, and the northwestern Andes,
especially the forest ecosystems of central Colombia, are among the most
threatened mountain areas that are also especially rich in biodiversity,
according to the report which calls for them to be made priorities in new
conservation strategies.

The report is being released in advance of next week's Global Mountain
Summit in Bishkek, the capital of the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan,
where as many as 700 participants, including several heads of state, will
cap the UN's International Year of the Mountains.