Sustainable Mountain Development - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 631

Implementing Sustainable Mountain Development
Over the decade following UNCED, interest in SMD grew in the very different contexts
of the world's mountain regions, which include—in economic terms—some of the richest
and some of the poorest communities in the world. One type of evidence for this growing
awareness is the number of laws, policies, and institutions with a mountain focus that
have emerged (Lynch and Maggio 2000; Castelein et al. 2006). While there is no glob-
al convention for mountain areas, they are specifically mentioned in three of the glob-
al conventions arising from UNCED: the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Con-
vention to Combat Desertification, and the Framework Convention on Climate Change.
In 1995, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) identified mountain ecosystems as the
subject of one of its ten operational programs. By 2002, GEF had committed over $620
million and leveraged about $1.4 billion of additional funding for at least 107 mountain-
related projects in 64 countries (Walsh 2002).
In 1996, the Government of Kyrgyzstan suggested that there should be an Interna-
tional Year focusing on SMD. This was proposed to the United Nations Economic and
Social Council (ECOSOC) in 1997, leading to a resolution to the UN General Assembly,
sponsored by 105 member countries, that the year 2002 should be the International
Year of Mountains (IYM). The General Assembly proclaimed the IYM in 1998, with sup-
port from 130 countries, the most ever to support such a resolution (Price and Messerli
2002). The objective of the IYM was to “promote the conservation and sustainable devel-
opment of mountain regions, thereby ensuring the well-being of mountain and lowland
communities” (FAO 2000b), explicitly recognizing the upland-lowland linkages embod-
ied in the concept of SMD. The year 2002 was also the year of “Rio + 10”—the World
Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), held in Johannesburg, South Africa. As
at UNCED 10 years before, the meeting's final document specifically referred to moun-
tains—this time, in paragraph 42 of the Plan of Implementation.
Regional and National Initiatives
In addition to the global initiatives that contribute to SMD in various ways, others have
emerged at regional and smaller scales. At the regional scale, in addition to the Alpine
Convention, signed in 1991, a Carpathian Convention was signed in 2003 (Quillacq and
Onida 2011), and range-wide agreements have been discussed for the Altai, the moun-
tains of southeastern Europe, and the Caucasus. Similarly, new regional institutions and
initiatives complemented those existing before UNCED, such as the Andean Community
of Nations (Communidad Andina), established in 1969 as the Andean Pact, and currently
with four members (Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru); various “working communities”
in the Alps and the Pyrenees; the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Develop-
ment (ICIMOD), established in 1983 for the Himalaya-Hindu Kush; and the Consortium
for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Ecoregion (CONDESAN), established
shortly before UNCED in 1992. These new initiatives also included the African High-
lands Initiative (German et al. 2012), established for eastern Africa in 1995 as part of
the Global Mountain Program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural
Research (CGIAR), which also included programs in the Andes and Himalaya. However,
these initiatives did not continue into the present decade.