Global Change and Mountains: Consequences, Responses and Opportunities - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 111

Resource Extraction
Mountains are considered as the largest reservoir of natural resources, such
as, water, forests, biodiversity, minerals and hydropower. Hydropower
generation is one of the major resource extraction activities in all mountain
regions of the world (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005b). A
large number of hydropower generation projects have inundated large
areas under reservoirs depleting land, water, forests and biodiversity in
mountains including in the higher Himalaya. This brings the severe risks
of seismic events and dam failure besides the threat catastrophic fl ooding
in the mountains as well as in their vast lowlands. In addition, the large
hydropower projects have displaced millions of people and ruined their
culture, traditions, customs, indigenous knowledge and traditional resource
utilization system worldwide (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005b).
Nevertheless, the lion's share of the benefi t generated by such projects is
enjoyed by the people far away from the mountains with no sentiments
for mountain environments and their poor people. In the Himalaya, a
large number of hydropower generation projects have now become highly
controversial on environmental, socio-economic as well as on cultural
grounds.
The mountains regions share the largest proportion of forests in many
countries, and therefore constitute one of the most valuable natural resources
in mountains. Besides providing fodder, fuel and timber, and raw material
for different forest-based industries; forests constitute one of the prime
sources of livelihood and employment to a considerably large proportion of
population both in the developed and developing regions across the planet
(Singh 2007, Tiwari and Joshi 2001). The forest resources of the mountain
regions are now depleting rapidly mainly due to their over-exploitation
in many countries. The unabated loss of forest cover not only adversely
affecting the mountain ecosystems services, water, biodiversity, soils, etc.
but also depriving a large number of forest-dependent communities of
their traditional livelihood in both developed and developing countries. It
is very diffi cult to estimate the losses of ecosystem services as they are not
priced or traded in markets. However, it has been observed that such losses
often overshadow the economic return coming out of logging and timber.
The studies indicated that the value of alternative uses exceeds the value
of logging by more than 50% (Hamilton 1996). In the Indian Himalaya, the
commercial exploitation of forests caused massive loss natural ecosystem
and rural livelihood during the last century which resulted in community
movement—' Chipko Movement '—for protection of forests against economic
utilization, and followed by prohibition on green felling at and above 1000
m elevation across the country. However, depletion of forest resources is
still continuing for construction of roads, dam, public building and also