World's Tallest Peaks Face Climate, Human Threats

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.

Experts fear that rapid ice melt in the Himalayas and other mountain areas may cause major flooding downstream. (Photo courtesy DEP Kumar/UNEP/Topham)

"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.

An estimated two-thirds of the world's renewable fresh water comes from mountain watersheds. (Photo courtesy T Natiano/UNEP/Topham)

"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.

The Mountain Watch report found that the risk of serious violent conflict is higher in mountain regions. (Photo courtesy Rosemary A Holt/UNEP/Topham)

"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.

The forest ecosystems of the Magdalena Valley in Colombia are amongst the most threatened - and biodiverse - mountain areas in the world, but they are threatened by logging. (Photo courtesy JP Ortiz/UNEP/Topham)

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.

{Published in cooperation with the OneWorld Network.}