MOUNTAIN NATURAL RESOURCES
towards sustainable management of natural resources

Rationale

Development interventions over the last few decades have brought about tremendous changes in the mountains, often at the cost of the limited and fragile mountain resources. With rapidly growing populations, such development efforts have exerted increased pressure on natural resources and have often caused their degradation and, at times, even irreversible losses. Unlike privately-owned and managed farm resources, most of these rapidly degrading resources, such as forests, water, ranges, wildlife, and biodiversity, are common property resources and managing them is both complex and difficult.

As development processes and interventions will continue, and even need to be accelerated, mountain resources will be subjected to even greater changes in the future. There is an urgent need to look for alternative strategies and approaches for better and more efficient management of mountain natural resources in order to ensure sustainable use. Diversity of mountain environments and a lack of sufficient understanding make the search for improved solutions a challenging task.

Improving the management of mountain natural resources is essentially an endeavour to respond to the challenges of ecologically sustainable development of mountain environments in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan Region.

COMPONENTS