Global Change and Mountains: Consequences, Responses and Opportunities - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 127

services through sustainable utilization and conservation of critical natural
resources, such as, land, water, forests, and biodiversity, and generating
economically viable options of rural livelihood other than agriculture, and
ensuring food security would constitute the critical components of the
process of climate change adaptation in mountain areas of less developed
countries. The strategy should have a wider scope for the generation of
off-farm livelihood employment opportunities particularly through the
promotion of local rural enterprise in different sectors of tourism. Hence,
tourism presents a great potential for the inclusive development of the
region.
However, agriculture will remain as one of the important economic
activities in the mountains of developing countries, and thus will constitute
one of the core components of overall climate change adaptation strategy
in the mountains in times to come. This is primarily because, agriculture
is not merely an important economic activity and fundamental source
of livelihood of local rural communities, but also constitutes an integral
part of their culture, history and traditions, and an invaluable treasure of
traditional ecological knowledge required for adapting to climate change.
Secondly, mountains have some of the highly productive and agriculturally
prosperous valleys and mid-slopes which still have the potential of
contributing towards food as well as livelihood security. Thirdly, the
potential of varying agro-climatic zones from valleys to higher elevation
can be utilized for growing a variety of crops and producing seasonal as
well as off-season agricultural products. Fourthly, for making tourism
ecologically conducive, economically viable and pro-poor livelihood and
adaptation strategy needs to be linked with local agricultural and food
systems. Lastly, integration of tourism with local production system will
create local viable market for the agricultural products and thus make
local agriculture economically viable. In view of this, 'Ecological Tourism'
which is now popularly known as 'Ecotourism' has immense potential to be
developed as potential adaptation strategy to climate change in mountain
areas of less developed countries. Ecotourism capitalizing upon both the
socio-cultural and biophysical strength of the mountain landscape would
contribute signifi cantly towards securing viable alternative livelihood
opportunities, particularly for the poor and marginalized mountain
communities in the mountains.
Regional initiatives, including the Mountain Research Imitative
(MRI), Mountain Forum (MF), Alpine Convention (AC) and the recent
global Mountain Initiative (MI) fl oated by the Government Nepal need
to be strengthened. The Mountain Partnership sponsored by FAO plays
signifi cant role in inter-connecting these various regional and global
initiatives. Regional information networks need to be established which
would act as effective learning and awareness generation forums between