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high value fruits, fl owers, vegetables and medicinal plants. The mountains
provide very little scope for the development of multiple livelihood options
to mountain communities other than subsistence agriculture, primarily
due to constraints of terrain and climate and the resultant inaccessibility.
However, tourism is now emerging as major livelihood option in mountain
areas in both the developed and the developing world. Tourism is now
a major source of employment and foreign exchange in the developing
countries, and it may also check the increasing rate of rural outmigration
of the educated and entreprenuering population. At the same time, with
rising temperatures mountain destinations in the subtropics and tropics
attracting increasing numbers of visitors, particularly during summer
months (Hoermann and Kollmair 2009).
Mountain systems consisting nearly 50% of global biodiversity hotspots
sustain and support half of the world's biological diversity and genetic
resources of which some are very rare. With rising temperatures upward
shifts of vegetation belts to higher elevations and northward advances in it
is expected that the geographical ranges of species may shift upward with
increase in global temperature in the northern hemisphere. These changes
are likely to bring a variety of changes in the composition, structure and
spatial distribution of biological resources creating a set of opportunities
for their conservation and sustainable development in high mountain
ecosystems across the planet. Thus mountain ecosystems would be able
to provide necessary protection to a variety of species which may face
extinction in lowlands (Körner 2009).
The drivers of global change have contributed signifi cantly towards
increasing awareness and improving the understanding of ecosystem goods
and services fl owing down from mountains and called for sustainable
development of mountain ecosystems and creating new livelihood
opportunities for mountain communities through restoration of ecosystem
services. The emerging opportunities for sustainable development in
mountains include the growing demands for mountains as popular
destinations for recreation. Furthermore, globalization has provided
mountain communities with a set of new economic opportunities in the
production of high value mountain products, such as, freshwater , fruits,
nuts, off-season vegetables, fl owers, honey, dairy products, and cosmetic,
aromatic and medicinal plants. However, the value added by mountain
dwellers will likely remain proportionally small unless local processing
replaces the export of raw produce (Jodha 2002). These trends are likely
to accelerate as market forces gain primacy. The rise in global demand for
mountain herbs and other organic and non-timber forest products is leading
to over-extraction. Climate change may also provide new opportunities
in the agricultural sector by increasing the length of growing seasons
for certain crops or the possibility of growing crops at higher altitudes,
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