MOUNTAIN environments cover about 27 per cent of the world’s land surface, and directly support those 22 per cent of the world’s people who live within mountain regions and their immediate forelands.
Mountain biodiversity provides basic ecosystem services such as freshwater, timber, medicinal plants, and recreation for the surrounding lowlands and their increasingly urbanised areas. By preventing erosion, mountain plant diversity secures livelihoods, traffic routes and catchment quality.
More than 50 per cent of mankind benefits from mountains as the world’s water towers. They host some of the world’s most complex agro-cultural gene pools and traditional management practices.
Mountains are rich in endemic species. In addition to supporting a great diversity of species and habitat types, the world’s mountains encompass some of the most spectacular landscapes and harbor a significant portion of distinct ethnic groups, varied remnants of cultural traditions, environmental knowledge and habitat adaptation.
Isolation and relative inaccessibility have helped protect and preserve species in mountains – from antelopes, eagles and llamas to wild varieties of mustard, cardamom, gooseberry and pumpkin. In the Andes, for example, farmers know of as many as 200 different varieties of indigenous potatoes.
While mountain services are vital, there are growing threats to their sustainable supply. Climate change, poverty, commercial mining, logging and poaching all exact a heavy toll on mountain biodiversity.
Mountain gorillas in Central Africa, spectacled bears in the Andes and the resplendent quetzals of Central America are all clinging to ever-shrinking patches of cloud forest. At the same time, trade in rare mountain plants and animals, including species of orchids, birds and amphibians, continues to deplete populations.
Threats to Mountain Biodiversity Human impact dominates large mountain areas, and its effects are often irreversible. Human activities are profoundly affecting the world’s climate and, consequently, mountain ecosystems. Because of their altitude, slope and orientation to the sun, they are easily disrupted by variations in climate.
As the world heats up, climate warming is also causing migration of plant and animal species. Given that all mountains become narrower with elevation, more species will compete for the upper area and its limited resources. As a consequence, rare species may be outcompeted in the long term.
The main problem presented by temperature increase concerns the speed of change: ongoing and expected climatic changes are much faster than what evolution and migration are commonly able to cope with. Human interaction with regional species and climatic drivers has shaped mountain biodiversity for centuries.
Many traditional upland grazing systems are classical examples of sustainable management. In recent decades, however, mining, industrialization, intensification of agriculture and tourism, exacerbated by population growth and ambiguous resource governance and tenure rights, have all led to pressures on biodiversity that were unknown before.
Moreover, poverty has caused upslope migration and forced farmers to use inappropriate land e.g. on erosion-prone slopes for agriculture, leading to significant biodiversity or soil losses in fragile mountain ecosystems.
Management of mountain biodiversity has increasingly been recognised as a global responsibility. In the past 40 years, protected areas have increased six- to eight-fold, largely in mountain areas, expanding from nine per cent of total mountain area in 1997 to 16 per cent in 2010.
While protected areas are essential, they alone cannot ensure conservation of biodiversity or cultural heritage.
Traditional indigenous communities often use and manage biodiversity in mountain protected areas, and may be even more threatened than biodiversity itself. Mountain regions where people live and work require innovative and respectful approaches to conservation; local people should be encouraged towards stewardship of both their natural and cultural heritage.
Participation of mountain communities at all stages is crucial in the sustainable management and use of biodiversity. Stewardship, with its focus on community-based management and local leadership, holds great promise for conservation of those mountain areas around the world where the biological, cultural and scenic qualities of the landscape are the result of the interactions of people with nature over a long time.
A gradual paradigm shift in conservation policies and practices has included the acceptance of communities as an integral part of national conservation initiatives, and the integration of many global conventions.
Conservation landscapes are increasingly recognized for their potential to maintain high levels of biodiversity in combination with intensive, but diversified, small-scale agriculture in densely populated mountain areas where the establishment or extension of formal protected wilderness areas is not feasible. These landscapes incorporate mixed crops, agro pastoral and agroforestry approaches, and soil and water conservation.
Wildlife & Environmental Conservation Society of Zambia
P.O. Box 30255, Lusaka, Zambia.
Telefax: 260-211-251630, Cell: 0977-780770
E-mail: wecsz@coppernet.zm