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.
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