Global Change and Mountains: Consequences, Responses and Opportunities - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 90

of human induced processes such as, population growth and resultant
intensifi cation of land use and depletion of natural resources, forest fi res,
globalization, urbanization, changing economic policies and orders;
political marginalization and cultural dilution. Moreover, changing climatic
conditions have stressed the mountain environments through, higher mean
annual temperatures and melting of glaciers and snow, altered precipitation
patterns, and more frequent and extreme weather events which are likely
intensify the impacts of other natural as well as socio-economic drivers of
change and may cause substantial decrease in availability of ecosystem
services, and consequently increase the proportion of water, health, food
and livelihood of insecure people in large part of their lowlands.
However, despite exhaustive debate and discussion on climate
change and its possible drivers, still there exist vast knowledge gaps in
understanding the crucial linkages between climate change and mountain
ecosystems. This indicates that the exact impacts of climate change on
mountains and its connection with other drivers of global change are yet
to be fully understood and interpreted at global as well as regional and
local levels. However, it is clear that the changes in mountain landscape
and resultant disruption of ecosystem services would directly lead to social
unsustainability and economic insecurity of 30% of world's population
living in mountains as well as in their vast lowlands.
This will have particularly severe impacts on the livelihood and economy
of mountains and their densely populated plains ecosystems in developing
countries dependent primarily on subsistence crop farming (Tiwari 2000).
Mountains exhibit a very high level of ethno-culturally complexity which is
refl ected in diversity of languages, dialects, food habits, costumes, traditions
and economic systems. The mountain communities and their culture is a
vast depository of rich traditional knowledge which they have evolved
through experimentation with complex natural conditions, and applying
in the conservation, management and governance of natural resources and
adapting to impacts of global change including rapidly changing climatic
conditions in mountains. The traditional community resource management
practices and traditional coping mechanism to environmental changes are
now being considered highly relevant and signifi cant in responding to the
impacts of global change mountain environments, and particularly for
low-intensity production systems at high altitude (UNEP-WCMC 2002).
This clearly indicates that mountain communities, particularly in
developing and underdeveloped countries are highly vulnerable to the
impacts of global change (UNEP-WCMC 2002) (Table 4.2). The driving forces
of mountain people's vulnerability include unbalanced poverty levels,
declining agricultural productivity and increasing food insecurity, poor
health conditions, high dependency on natural resources, socio-economic
and political marginalization and limited livelihood options. The potency