快猫短视频

DAWN from the summit of Kilimanjaro is a joyful moment. A ripe apricot sun bursts over the horizon colouring the marble-hard ice and brown rocks. In an instant the mountain鈥檚 shadow springs 80 kilometres across forests and farmland. Far below, another day begins while the unchanging, impassive mountain looks on.

Except, of course, that Kilimanjaro is changing, and changing fast. At least one-third of the massive ice field draped across the summit of the dormant volcano has disappeared in little more than a decade. Over 80 per cent has melted away since the first maps were drawn in 1912. 鈥淎t this rate, all of the ice will be gone between the years 2010 and 2020. And that is a conservative estimate,鈥� says Lonnie Thompson from Ohio State University鈥檚 Byrd Polar Research Center, who reported the findings last year. And Kilimanjaro is not alone.

In 1976, when Thompson鈥檚 team visited South America to drill Peru鈥檚 Quelccaya ice cap in the Andes, the ice was 156 metres thick and Qori Kalis, the largest glacier flowing from it, was 2.4 kilometres long. The glacier is now only 1.4 kilometres long and retreating by 202 metres a year. Thompson believes that within a decade you鈥檒l be able to walk across exposed rock where the Quelccaya ice cap used to be and see where his drill bit touched bottom. All the equatorial ice caps, like those in Tanzania and Peru, are melting fast, and they are harbingers of a much bigger problem. 鈥淭hese glaciers are very much like canaries once used in coal mines,鈥� says Thompson. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e an indicator of massive changes taking place.鈥�

While we鈥檙e well aware of the threat to the rainforests and the oceans, in the popular imagination mountains are indestructible, the epitome of just how robust nature can be. 鈥淢uch more money has been spent publicising the plight of the rainforests than on mountains,鈥� says Martin Price, director of the Centre for Mountain Studies at the University of Highlands and Islands in Perth, Scotland. 鈥淢ountains are complicated to sell. They鈥檙e important for water, they鈥檙e important for biodiversity, they are where indigenous peoples live and so on.鈥� But mountains are also among the most volatile and threatened environments on Earth, which is why we can no longer afford to ignore them.

Changes like those in Peru and Tanzania are more than merely an academic curiosity. The Peruvian government has invested heavily in hydroelectricity turbines, which will soon run out of water to drive them. 鈥淲hat they鈥檙e doing now is cashing in on a bank account that was built over thousands of years but isn鈥檛 being replenished,鈥� says Thompson. Ironically, Peru may soon have to replace its hydro schemes with fossil-fuel power stations. Meanwhile, in Tanzania, over a million people live around the base of Kilimanjaro and the local economy relies heavily on the influx of tourists lured by the volcano鈥檚 white summit. More than 20,000 trekkers attempt to reach the summit each year, bringing millions of dollars to the Tanzanian economy. Tanzanian officials, anxious about Kilimanjaro鈥檚 appeal melting away, refute Thompson鈥檚 research.

Across the world such ostrich-like attitudes have often been the knee-jerk response of governments faced with problems in mountain areas. Twenty-four per cent of the Earth is defined as mountainous and 1 in 10 of the world鈥檚 population live in these areas. Almost 80 per cent of the 600 million mountain-dwellers live below the poverty line. Of the 18 regions identified in 2002 by the UN as being in desperate need of humanitarian aid, 11 of them are mountainous. In the poorest mountain countries average income is just 7 per cent of the world average, more than one-third of all women are illiterate, and almost 1 in 10 children die before the age of five.

But despite the powerful statistics, says Price, mountain people are often ignored. 鈥淢ountains are usually far from capital cities and the people who live in mountains are comparatively few and therefore don鈥檛 count much in terms of votes,鈥� he says. 鈥淥ften these people are ethnically different from the people living in the cities. And doing anything in terms of infrastructure is far more expensive because of the terrain. For all these reasons, mountains are at the bottom of the agenda.鈥�

By ignoring and disenfranchising mountain people, governments are simply exacerbating the problem. Living on the political margins leads to conflict, according to S. Frederick Starr from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. 鈥淐aught between isolation and integration, oppressed by indifferent or ineffective governments, yet with enough access to modern communications to know they are being discriminated against, mountain people resort to desperate measures,鈥� he says. 鈥淒rug production, a psychology of victimhood, and the lure of radical movements are the outward manifestations of social and economic failure.鈥�

The ethnic differences between people who live at altitude and those who inhabit the plains can fuel conflict. Add to the mixture strategically vital resources such as water and hydroelectricity, and the fact that many mountain ranges form a natural frontier between competing nations, and you have a recipe for disaster.

It is no coincidence that of the 27 major conflicts being fought in the world in 1999, 23 of them were in mountainous countries. India and Pakistan, for example, have been fighting across the Siachen glacier for decades, as part of their struggle to control the disputed region of Kashmir. The Sudanese government spent much of the 1990s waging a genocidal war against the Nuba people in the country鈥檚 central highlands. Half of the million or so original Nuba population have now been resettled and as many as 100,000 were killed. In Nepal, poverty and corruption have led to a brutal insurgency by Maoist guerrillas, and in the mountains of central Colombia to the displacement of 1.5 million people.

鈥淭he problem of war and peace in mountain areas is among the most urgent and intractable issues of international relations today,鈥� says Starr. But, he argues, few policy makers are prepared to acknowledge that mountain areas suffer from particular problems that make them especially prone to conflict. 鈥淓ven today it is convenient to treat each instance of armed combat in mountain areas as unique,鈥� he says.

The world鈥檚 failure to address the political and social volatility that triggers conflict in the mountains may seem a remote issue for most of us. Why should we care about high and far-off places? The answer can be reduced to one word: water. Simply put, mountains are nature鈥檚 water towers. All of the Earth鈥檚 major rivers 鈥� including the Nile, Indus, Amazon and Yangtze 鈥� rise in the mountains. In humid countries, almost two-thirds of fresh water comes from mountains, while in desert climates the figure is as high as 90 per cent.

The entire population of California, for example, gets its drinking water from the mountains. And Himalayan glaciers store monsoon rainwater, providing a permanent flow in the great rivers of South Asia. But as the glaciers begin to disappear river flows will become less reliable and eventually diminish, bringing widespread water shortages. Three billion people rely on the rivers that originate on the Tibetan plateau. Globally, more than 1 billion people are already without access to clean drinking water, and that number is expected to rise to 3 billion by 2025. Keeping clean water flowing is critical.

鈥淭he protection of water sources and mountain watersheds depends on people,鈥� says Maritta Koch-Weser, president of Earth 3000, a non-profit environmental organisation based in Berlin. But, she argues, mountain people are too poor to take 鈥渢he environmental high road鈥�. They need economic incentives to refrain from clear-cutting and other unsustainable forestry and agricultural practices that destroy mountain ecosystems and create problems downstream. 鈥淥ne promising instrument for downstream-upstream cooperation is payments for environmental services,鈥� says Koch-Weser. Water users compensate forest owners, landowners and smallholders upstream for forest conservation, reforestation or other services to maintain water quantity and quality downstream.

One example is an agreement made in New South Wales in 1999 between the state forestry department and an association of 600 irrigation farmers. For every hectare of land the state reforests, the farmers collectively pay $42 a year for the next 10 years. The project protects the farmers from salinity and safeguards water quality for other users. More famously, in 1992 New York City started paying farmers in the Catskill mountains to manage the city鈥檚 watershed sustainably rather than spend more than $7 billion for a new filtration plant. The city鈥檚 taxpayers have saved in excess of $5 billion and improved the upstream environment. There are now similar schemes in Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador and the Philippines.

The protection of watersheds is inextricably linked to the condition of mountain forests. Mountainous regions contain 28 per cent 鈥� more than 9 million square kilometres 鈥� of the world鈥檚 forests. These are a vital source of timber for local people. They also provide food and fodder for animals and other non-wood products such as medicines. Intense pressure from logging around the world threatens this resource but people are slowly beginning to appreciate the value of mountain forests beyond that as a source of timber. Non-government organisations in Switzerland have calculated that the protection forests give from erosion, rockfalls and avalanches is worth $2 billion each year to local communities. And US Department of Agriculture estimates suggest that almost three-quarters of the US National Forests鈥� contribution to GDP 鈥� worth more than $100 billion 鈥� comes from recreation and less than 3 per cent from logging. Despite this, the pressure to increase commercial logging in the US is growing.

Mountain forests are also a rich source of biodiversity. And nowhere more so than the world鈥檚 cloud forests 鈥� unique ecosystems found only in the tropics and subtropics where cooler temperatures on mountain slopes cause clouds to form. 鈥淚n a small area the size of Machu Picchu, we can find the same plant diversity as on the whole continent of Europe,鈥� says Percy Nu帽ez, an independent researcher and botanist based in Cuzco. But cloud forests are even more endangered than rainforests because global warming is shifting the clouds ever higher up the peaks until eventually they lift off (快猫短视频, 8 May 1999, p 32). Nu帽ez estimates that they will all be gone in the next 10 years and we don鈥檛 even know what we might be losing. 鈥淓ighty to 90 per cent of the cloud forests are a mystery to us,鈥� he says.

If you want to see cloud forest in Costa Rica or, indeed, snow on the equator, best go now. But don鈥檛 fool yourself that tourism isn鈥檛 contributing to the deterioration of fragile mountain environments. Even putting aside the considerable contribution international air travel makes to global warming, tourism is a double-edged sword. Every year, around 50 million people take holidays in the world鈥檚 mountains, and as much as 20 per cent of world tourism turnover is generated there 鈥� with 10 per cent coming from the European Alps alone. In principle, that money could bolster impoverished communities and secure the mountain environments that tourists come to experience. In practice, tourists and their dollars are more likely to lead to the sort of environmental degradation associated with the alpine ski industry and to the undermining of traditional societies.

Despite these problems, mountain tourism has proved a powerful instrument in reducing poverty in some parts of the world. Several of India鈥檚 mountain states 鈥� particularly those that are politically stable 鈥� have kept pace with the national economy. Bhutan鈥檚 per capita GDP grew from $100 in 1977 to $551 in 1991, mainly as the result of it pursuing a policy of low-volume, high-price tourism. Last year, only 6393 tourists were allowed in, but each paid a minimum of $200 a day for the privilege. A quarter of Bhutan has been designated as national parks and the government is committed to ensuring that 60 per cent of the country remains forested. Conservation body the WWF has described the country as 鈥渁 model for proactive conservation initiatives鈥�.

Bhutan is a small country where benefits from tourism can be more easily distributed. In neighbouring Nepal, economic growth has been harder to share equitably. Tek, a 67-year-old farmer, points out that in his community the mountains themselves impose limitations on economic development. 鈥淔or the poor people it is difficult to survive,鈥� he says. 鈥淚n our family we are 10 members. The land is the same as before. We can鈥檛 stretch it.鈥� Judging what needs to be done to improve the lives of Tek and other people living in remote mountain communities requires an understanding of their particular problems.

Yet, to date, much of the data on which decisions might be based has not even been gathered. 鈥淢ountain regions are hardly ever reported upon separately,鈥� says Safdar Parvez of the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, a body dedicated to studying and reducing mountain poverty. 鈥淭his omission leads to what is often referred to as the 鈥榮tatistical invisibility鈥� of mountain regions.鈥�

Some would argue that this invisibility stretches beyond statistics to everyday attitudes. Mountains barely scraped onto Agenda 21 at the Earth Summit in Rio 10 years ago. And they have hardly made 鈥渁 wrinkle鈥� in the universe of policy makers, according to Price. But he believes change is on the way because we simply cannot continue to ignore an environment that is so crucial to our survival. 鈥淭he greatest challenge is to increase awareness about how important mountains are to everyone,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hey are the sources of water for the majority of humankind.鈥�