The
pioneer environmentalist, Professor Nicholas Polunin, was founder
and Editor in Chief of this learned quarterly headquartered in Geneva
and distributed world -wide. It continues since his death and is
now edited out of Newcastle U.K. by his son
Dr. Nicholas Vladimir Polunin.
Article
in "Environmental Conservation"
The United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development {UNCED} will open on June 1, 1992 in Rio de Janeiro 20 years
after its predecessor, the landmark Stockholm Conference (officially the
United Nations Conference on the Human Environment) of 1972, put environment
on the world's political agenda. Interestingly the Secretary General for
1992 is the same man who propelled the Stockholm Conference to such a remarkable
success, Maurice F. Strong of Canada.
Now, as then, there is a rush for influence. There
is also a widespread apprehension that anything missing from the conference
agenda will be at a disadvantage in the years to come. The ambitions of
the conference are not modest. The principles which bear on environmental
and developmental concerns are grouped in the so-called Earth Charter
and the assembly of action resolutions is referred to as the planetary
management agenda for the next century or Agenda 21
The Stockholm Conference necessarily chose to highlight
the more pressing concerns of the time. Mountain ecosystems did not feature
nor did acid rain, ozone, or climatic change. Indeed the concept of planetary
management was regarded in political circles as hardly serious. The twenty
years that have passed since Stockholm have changed all that.
Why should mountain ecosystems feature at Rio? Rather
like the trio above - acid rain, ozone, and climatic change, at the time
of Stockholm, mountain ecosystems were known to some people to be a matter
of urgent concern. They were rapidly degrading under pressure from growing
populations and their various demands.
They cover 20 per cent of the earth's land surface
and directly provide the life support base for about 10 per cent of global
population. Indirectly mountains are a source of water and energy, timber
and minerals, spiritual inspiration and recreation for more than half the
world's population
The people whose life support base is in mountain
regions amount to nearly 500 million. They are mostly poor, subject to
high population growth, politically marginal and yet they are the stewards
of regions whose degradation will adversely affect the conditions of life
of three to four times as many people on the plains below.
Mountains are the storehouse of a great wealth of
biodiversity; they also shelter a greater treasure of cultural diversity,
together with the associated indigenous environmental knowledge, than any
other major ecological division. These two characteristics are the direct
consequences of the extreme range of natural and cultural niches which
has been generated by the unique, extra, vertical dimension of the mountain
landscape, the global vegetational belts and the climatic zones. On one
mountain massif alone, these bio-climatic divisions may range from tropical
rain forest to permanent ice and snow.
Because of political and socio-economic marginality,
fragmentation of jurisdiction among nation states, and because of steep
slopes and fragile vegetation cover, the very diversity of the milieu renders
mountains highly susceptible to environmental degradation, as well as to
climatic change.
Global warming and climatic change are likely to
have immediate repercussions in the mountains in terms of the availability
of water and hydro electricity for the surrounding lowlands, the shifting
of vegetational belts and thus surface reflectance with its meteorological
consequences, the success or failure of winter recreational investments
to name only a few.
These problems are rendered all the more intractable
simply because insufficient knowledge is available on which to base appropriate
countermeasures.
The Mountain Agenda UNCED 1992 initiative
seeks to use the occasion of UNCED to publicize the mountain problematique.
It began with individuals from the UN University (UNU), the International
Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) based in Kathmandu
and the network constituted by the International Mountain Society (IMS).
They have sought to provide channels for contributions
from as wide a variety of people as possible.
The core of the activity is, first, a 200,000 word
status report on the environmental and developmental condition of
the world's mountains; next an appeal document presenting the case
for action in a shorter, illustrated format and introducing a plan for
immediate action; and last a two-page manifesto. These three documents
will be published before the conference next year. The IMS Newsletter No.2
of February 1991 carried a detailed account of the initiative and a comprehensive
checklist for the guidance of contributors to the status report.
In parallel there is a call for public hearings and
other media events around the world to raise public expectations and prepare
the ground for the reception of the documents. This second strand of activity
is less advanced than the primary one of preparing a convincing case to
secure action by governments at Rio. but will, it is hoped, gather pace.
Financial support so far has been given by the Governments of Switzerland
and Germany.
Further details may be obtained from:- Mountain Agenda,
c/o Institute of Geography, University of Berne, Hallerstrasse 12, CH-3012
Berne.
Editor's note: The Manifesto
of just two pages mentioned above proved to be unwritable.
Mallory´s
body found, Knoydart
rescued, Himalayan
glaciers-alarm grows, Everest
Forests-a Sherpa's view,
The
epic of Mt. Everest, The state of the world mountains, My first summer in Sierra
Poems
and Belles letters, The Yellow brick Road
- Polemic, Paradise fishing at Autannes, Traditional
Solar Science,Dogs
on high, Obituary, Esme Percy,
Web-sites for browsing
Prince
Sadruddin Aga Khan on sustainable mountain tourism
P.B.
Stone on mountains under pressure (general overeview of so-called Mountain
problematique
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