The District Roads Support Program (DRSP) in Tanzania has been addressing a long-standing problem of accessibility to the fertile and productive Uluguru mountains in the Morogoro region. Challenges are technical (steepness of slopes and wet climate), financial (lack of national resources and high maintenance costs), and social (ensuring that improved access to markets will benefit all social groups). Project support has focused on addressing all of these issues: it has introduced soil stabilization and alternative pavement methods, helped construct a new type of pedestrian bridge, promoted low-cost and durable road improvement involving the local population, taken into account the whole area instead of focusing only on a few roads, provided reliable access to markets in the region and outside markets, supported income generating activities for the poor, as well as disseminated information about the spreading and prevention of HIV/AIDS.

The livelihoods of mountain farmers are often constrained by poor access to markets and limited entrepreneurial skills for adding value to produce. Research and development organizations have now recognized that improving market access and enhancing the ability of resource-poor mountain farmers to diversify their links with markets are among the most pressing challenges in mountain agriculture. What is not so obvious is how to link small-scale farmers in marginal areas to growth markets, and how to develop methods and approaches that effectively integrate research, market access and development of community agroenterprise. The present article highlights the key steps and procedures in building capacity among farmers, farmers' groups, and communities to identify and evaluate market opportunities, develop profitable agroenterprise, and intensify production, while sustaining the resources upon which livelihoods depend. This approach, known as Participatory Market Research (PMR)—a component of the Enabling Rural Innovation (ERI) initiative—is being implemented and further refined by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in collaboration with research and development partners in Uganda, Malawi, and Tanzania.

The Tansen Community Multimedia Center (CMC) initiative is part of a regional innovation and research project initiated by UNESCO to study the potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for poverty reduction. The project is looking for ways in which ICTs can be used to empower and strengthen the voices of the poor.

Community multimedia centers are an extension of UNESCO's long-standing work with community radio, inspired by the increasingly important role played by new digital technologies. Community multimedia centers like the one in Tansen, Palpa District, Nepal, combine traditional community media—in Tansen's case video, cable TV, and print—with new media tools such as computers and the Internet. The goal is to explore ways in which Tansen can use ICTs as dynamic development tools: to bring more voices, cultural forms, ideas, and issues into the community's media space, and to provide poor, marginalized youth with new skills and opportunities.

The combination of established local media such as community TV with new technologies like the Internet opens up great possibilities to link small, comparatively inaccessible towns and villages such as Tansen to new global networks. New media are not only powerful tools for producing content, they are also gateways to ever-expanding information and knowledge resources.

Attempts to improve risk communication strategies in order to prevent and mitigate disasters caused by natural hazards have been made worldwide. However, most such strategies target non-indigenous populations, while vulnerable communities located in remote mountain areas in the least developed countries lack information in their native language.

Awareness of risks associated with flooding and rainfall-induced landslides increased as a result of the tragedy in autumn 1999 in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico, where loods and landslides devastated dozens of municipalities, claiming more than 200 lives. Consequently, a booklet and a radio message focusing on awareness and preparedness in the event of landslides were produced in Nahuatl, the Aztec language, as an accessibility tool to help prevent and mitigate disasters in indigenous communities. Findings from a preliminary acceptance evaluation undertaken in a local community are analyzed and discussed as an initial approach to developing a sound risk communication strategy based on local knowledge.

Traditionally, highlands in Turkey have been used mainly for transhumance, a pastoral system based on seasonal transfer of livestock herds to and from uplands. The back-to-nature trend in the 1990s led to a rediscovery of the highlands by non-rural populations, a trend that is threatening to destroy both natural and cultural resources in mountains. The Ministry of Tourism, inspired by the concept of ecotourism, announced in the 1990s that it would open the highlands of the East Black Sea region to development, as this region's share of overall tourism income was negligible, and classified various highlands located there and in other regions as “tourism centers.” Infrastructure investments which the Government tried to introduce in the highlands, combined with uncontrolled demand, has led to unplanned development with negative impacts. The factors that threaten both the highlands and transhumance in the Mediterranean, Central Anatolian and Black Sea regions can be divided into 4 categories: unplanned infrastructure investments, mass tourism-oriented development, construction of second homes, and traditional festivals that are losing their substance.

There is a common belief that underdeveloped regions with major accessibility problems have insufficient resources for development. However, social and economic development in these regions can be realized through proper planning and resource management. A rural development project (RDP) focusing on social and economic development through protection of biodiversity in northern Turkey is a good example. Breeding of Caucasian queen bees (Apis mellifera caucasica), ecotourism, and eco-agriculture have been successful in this respect. The project received the “World Summit Business Award for Sustainable Development Partnership” from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) at the World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002 in Johannesburg.

During the past century the “Theory of Himalayan Environmental Degradation” has dominated mainstream views concerning natural resource management in the Himalayan region. The main tenet of this theory is that increased human population has resulted in increased demands for natural resources, leading to severe resource depletion, especially deforestation. In this article, we use local data on fuelwood consumption and timber extraction from Basho Valley in northern Pakistan to investigate whether such general perceptions regarding forest depletion can be supported by an empirical case study. The results of this study indicate that local fuelwood collection is not the main cause of deforestation. Instead, the estimated deforestation of about 30% during the last 3 decades is primarily due to commercial harvesting and mismanagement by the government. A large amount of dead fallen wood and green trees was sold by the government or was taken out by a “timber mafia” that emerged during the main period of commercial harvesting in the 1970s and 80s. Thus, it is commercial and illegal harvesting that has left the forest in such a depleted state that it can no longer withstand the pressure from local use.

Mountain resort communities in North America depend on tourism and recreation for their economic viability. Heavy recreation and other anthropogenic activities such as land conversion for development directly threaten mountain ecosystems. To maintain beneficial ecosystem services and preserve the characteristics that draw people to the area, there is much interest in setting aside conservation reserves. Historically, reserve networks have been selected in an opportunistic manner guided by local expert knowledge, but this method frequently results in networks that fail to be fully representative of biodiversity. More recently, systematic reserve selection tools have been developed for conservation planning at national or regional scales. This science-based approach has great appeal to local planners, as it has the potential to be very effective and efficient. Systematic tools have not been used for reserve selection at small scales and their merit in community planning is unknown. Here we present the results of a case study in which we used systematic software to select a conservation reserve network in the Resort Municipality of Whistler, Canada. We describe the Whistler area ecosystems and potential threats, and examine the suitability of systematic reserve selection tools for mountain resort planning. After considering factors such as the discrepancy between scales of planning and geographic data, data quality, and expected delays in designation of reserves, we suggest that systematic reserve selection tools should be used with caution, and only in conjunction with local expert knowledge.

Amenity migration, the movement of people for pleasure rather than economic reasons, has become a major phenomenon in mountainous regions of western North America. Research suggests that planning to promote and manage amenity migration can contribute to the sustainable development of mountain communities. The present article reports the results of a rapid reconnaissance of the capacities of hinterland mountain municipalities in British Columbia, Canada, to plan for amenity migration. Low capacity was found in awareness and technical understanding of the phenomenon.

The International Year of Mountains (IYM) 2002 drew attention to mountain regions and their fragile ecosystems. The present article makes a comparative analysis of mountain case studies from developing countries (DCs) and industrialized countries (ICs) using sustainability variables in the framework of a Driving force–Pressure–State–Impact–Response Model (DPSIR Model). Response variables, ie efforts made by society to move towards sustainable mountain development (SMD), are believed to improve the situation with regard to sustainability, and are a focus of this study. In the course of the IYM, a total of 40 appropriate case studies were analyzed, to demonstrate the wide variety of approaches to SMD. Case studies that deal with themes considered to be particularly important in mountain regions were chosen for analysis. Such key themes include freshwater, forestry, agriculture, poverty, indigenous knowledge, migration, tourism, and legislation. Variables of great importance in any mountain area include “involvement of stakeholders in planning and development process (public participation)” and “gathering of baseline information.” Additional challenges to SMD in DCs include lack of options to facilitate out-migration, declining forest cover, insufficient access to resources, and poverty. The main conclusion of this study is that the DPSIR Model that was applied is an adequate tool with which to analyze SMD case studies, especially studies relating to DCs.

Soil erosion assessment and prediction play critical roles in addressing problems associated with erosion control and environmental rehabilitation. The past dynamics of soil erosion can provide information valuable for understanding the relation of soil erosion to environmental change and anthropogenic activity. The Chinese Loess Plateau was once a high, flat plain in northwestern China, but now more than 70% of the area is gully-hill dominated, owing to massive soil erosion during the later Quaternary and human-induced accelerated soil erosion in recent centuries. The present article investigates the dynamics of erosion during the Holocene and the driving forces of human activities and bio-climatic changes. Modern soil erosion on the Loess Plateau is a combination of intensive natural erosion and human-induced erosion, the latter being 4 times as intense as the former.

In this investigation, an advanced Harmonic Analysis of Time Series (HANTS) technique has been introduced in order to remove cloud contamination from the satellite-based Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) over the Tibetan Plateau. Due to high elevation, Asian monsoon, and the prevailing local convective weather, the probability of cloud occurrence in the daytime is very high over the Tibetan Plateau. It is therefore very difficult to directly obtain cloud-free vegetation index images using satellite optical remote sensing data over the entire Tibetan Plateau. Applying the HANTS algorithm made it possible to successfully replace the cloud contamination in NDVI images by the HANTS synthesized results, not only in temporal variation but also in regional distribution. The reconstructed NDVI images are cloud-free and more reliable; the HANTS-generated parameters are also potentially useful in understanding vegetation evolution and phenological characteristics over the mountainous regions of the Tibetan Plateau.

The composition and density of soil seed banks was studied at Harenna Forest after a major fire in the year 2000. Soil samples were collected from burned and unburned portions of the forest using quadrants 15 × 15 cm and 9 cm deep, laid along line transects. Forest recovery was also monitored on burned sites using permanent plots of 0.1 ha. One hundred fifty-five seedlings germinated from the soil samples, of which 140 and 15 were from the unburned and burned sites, respectively. The proportion of woody species found on the unburned site was 47%, while on the burned site only one woody species was recorded. Overall mean densities were 621 ± 15 and 66 ± 2 seeds per m² on the unburned and burned sites, respectively. The greatest diversity was found in the upper soil layer, followed by the middle, litter, and lower soil layers collected from the unburned site. Eighteen months after the fire, the burned site was covered with 32 species of dense vegetation, which attained a height of 3.5 m. Our results revealed that although the fire exhausted the soil seed bank, the vegetation could regenerate quickly with pioneer species, which differed in composition from the neighboring unburned stand. This implies that most species in Harenna Forest are sensitive to fire and could be eliminated easily from the area unless they are properly protected. Therefore, an appropriate management plan should be developed and implemented for the remaining forest, including protection from fire.