Since September 2000, when world leaders agreed on time-bound, measurable goals to reduce extreme poverty, hunger, illiteracy, and disease while fostering gender equality and ensuring environmental sustainability, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have increasingly come to dominate the policy objectives of many states and development agencies. The concern has been raised that the tight timeframe and financial restrictions might force governments to invest in the more productive sectors, thus compromising the quality and sustainability of development efforts. In the long term, this may lead to even greater inequality, especially between geographical regions and social strata. Hence people living in marginal areas, for example in remote mountain regions, and minority peoples risk being disadvantaged by this internationally agreed agenda.

Strategies to overcome hunger and poverty in their different dimensions in mountain areas need to focus on strengthening the economy of small-scale farmers, while also fostering the sustainable use of natural resources, taking into consideration their multifunctionality.

Since its founding, the United Nations has included among its goals poverty eradication, food security, “health for all,” universal literacy and education, protection of the environment, and the end of social discrimination. Special international mobilizations for one particular goal (or a particular set of goals) have taken place several times during the past 50 years. The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) movement is the latest and perhaps the most politically committed of these initiatives. UN summit declarations and subsequent international activism are beneficial at all levels: as a result of their momentum, policies are enhanced, funds raised, and programs implemented. However, there are sometimes unintended effects at the field level, where great pressure is put on project managers and staff to change approaches, invest money, scale up activities, and get “visible” results in a short time. The present case study illustrates such side effects in the context of the FAO Special Program for Food Security (SPFS) in Guatemala. The study argues that poverty and hunger reduction require long-term fieldwork and steady impact monitoring, and that the MDG-related “scaling-up” of development projects and programs should be adjusted to the local pace.

The International Potato Center (CIP) has had an evolving research-for-development agenda that includes potatoes, sweet potatoes, Andean roots and tubers, and sustainable use of natural resources in mountains. In 2003, CIP completed a participatory Vision Exercise that led to prioritization of 7 development challenges that reflect 8 of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In summary, these challenges include: reducing poverty and hunger; improving human health; developing sustainable rural and urban systems; and improving the availability of new technologies. A strategy was developed to help accomplish the selected MDGs. The first step towards implementation of this vision was a realignment of CIP's research program. Then, using different tools such as GIS and available national, regional, and world statistics, poverty targeting was carried out in order to prioritize the countries and regions where CIP will focus its resources and its research and development efforts. Targets were identified by overlaying poverty, hunger, and vulnerability with the areas where CIP's commodities are produced. Within this framework, the Center is implementing a new project in the Central Andes Altiplano, which is supported by the Government of Canada as well as other donors. The project is called ALTAGRO (Andean Agriculture in the Altiplano).

Turkey's Millennium Development Goals Report was published in 2005. In this report, Turkey's commitments and goals for achieving the MDGs are explicitly presented, and activities carried out since the year 2000 and their concrete results are also included. Turkey takes the MDGs as a national challenge. Providing primary education to the entire country is one of the country's Millennium Goals, since 1 million Turkish children of primary school age do not go to school. This figure contains a larger number of girls than boys, with a gender gap of 7%. More than 50% of these 1 million children between the ages of 6 and 14 live in the remote and mountainous eastern and southeastern provinces. For this reason, a campaign known as “Off to School, Girls!” (“Haydi KIzlar Okula!”) was initiated in 2003 by the Ministry of National Education (MONE) with the support of UNICEF, in order to eliminate the enrolment gap between boys and girls and increase enrolment and the attendance rate of girls in these regions. Turkey carried out studies on primary education parallel to the campaign. These focused on increasing the number of school buildings and classrooms and the capacities of primary boarding schools, broadening the bussing education system, meeting the school requirements of poor students, and providing tools and materials for schools.

The Philippine government has committed itself to the Millennium Development Goal of achieving 100% primary education in 10 years. At the national level and within the context of formal education, Education for All (EFA) has been adopted as the flagship program and the Department of Education (DepEd) has a mandate to be aggressive in pursuing reforms to boost performance, eg through the Basic Education Reform Agenda (BESRA). BESRA propels the “School First Policy” that aims to give local governments more leeway in planning their education reform agenda. A policy of devolution ensures freedom to local DepEd units in implementing EFA goals, especially in funding. This is complemented by basic reforms within the DepEd bureaucracy, including the transformation of the Non-Formal Education (NFE) Bureau into the Bureau of Alternative Learning Systems (BALS).

Particularly on mountainous Mindanao—home to at least 2 major groups of indigenous and minority populations, the Moro and the Lumad—the Arroyo administration has taken a cue from the Republic Act 9054, otherwise known as the Organic Act on Autonomous Muslim Mindanao—a by-product of the 1996 Peace Accord—to be cognizant of plurality and cultural diversity on Mindanao. Thus, the DepEd is charged with spearheading the cultural integration agenda by including Islamic values and basic Arabic grammar into the curriculum in areas where Muslims are a majority. Meanwhile, catering to the non-Muslim indigenous Lumad, the DepEd passed a memorandum in June 2004 accrediting Indigenous People's (IP) schools. Yet it is apparent that the reforms have so far been national in focus and integrationist, rather than substantial moves towards the full recognition and empowerment of traditional systems and indigenous ways of educating the IP and minority children. Policy is one thing, but implementation remains palliative and lukewarm.

This paper examines the extent, causes, and consequences of abandonment of agricultural land near the village of Sikles in the Nepal Himalaya. Socioeconomic information was collected in a household survey. Abandoned agricultural land and geomorphic damage were mapped at plot level for an area of 149.6 ha. Plot-level analysis showed that nearly 49% of all khet land and 37% of all bari land had been abandoned. About 10% of all khet land had been completely damaged by landslides and floods. Nearly 41% of all abandoned plots were subjected to different forms of geomorphic damage. The amount of geomorphic damage on plots abandoned earlier is greater than that on plots abandoned recently. Abandonment of agricultural land does not automatically lead to plant colonization because geomorphic damage is intensified prior to colonization. Abandoned land requires further management for plant colonization as well as for reducing the risk of geomorphic hazards. Prevailing government policies and acts are not effective in managing abandoned land. The phenomenon of abandoned agricultural land observed in the Nepal Himalaya is not unique: it is common in many mountain areas in the world. However, this phenomenon has recently led to pronounced socioeconomic and environmental problems in Nepal.

The present article uses historical, archival, and photographic evidence to examine the process of deforestation in the central highlands of Eritrea since the late 19th century. It finds that the extent of deterioration has been far less than generally believed by both policy-makers and rural people themselves, and by no means uniform in time and space. Furthermore, the factors that are assumed to have contributed to deforestation in this region have largely been exaggerated, while rural communities have been more adept at handling scarce wood resources than generally believed. The case of Eritrea provides evidence in support of a growing body of literature that seeks to challenge prevailing orthodoxies about the scale and pattern of deforestation in Africa and popular policies of large-scale tree planting that have been devised as a response to such perceptions.

In Norway, as in many other countries, new protected areas are currently being established and managed with strong policy references to “local participation.” Is this policy implemented in a way that incorporates the concern for gender equality? The present article provides data from a study of 2 cases in which new protected areas have recently been established. The first is the Dovre Mountains Conservation Plan ( Verneplan for Dovrefjell), which was adopted in 2002 and includes Dovrefjell-Sunndalsfjella National Park. In the second case, the focus is on an area which was established in 2004 as the Geiranger-Herdalen Landscape Protected Area (landskapsvernområde). It is argued that one could expect Norway—perhaps more than any other country—to implement local participation in protected area establishment in a way that ensures gender equality. However, the results of the study show that local participation within the context of conservation issues ignores policies and legislation on gender equality. These findings are analyzed and causes for this state of affairs are shown to reside in structural features on the one hand, and the lack of demand for female candidates in local elections and appointments on the other. It is concluded that the main factor explaining this situation is neglect by Norwegian conservation authorities of their responsibility for gender mainstreaming. Efforts to legitimate conservation with reference to local participation are seen as problematical when local women are involved only to a very limited extent.

The development of Swiss Alpine landscapes must comply with the needs of different interest groups. We assume that the way people relate to places, and particularly the sense of place they have, is a basis for their needs and aims regarding future landscape development. Conflicts among aims can be better understood if the underlying place relations are known. Therefore, we inductively examined differences between locals' and tourists' sense of place by means of a qualitative interview study in Alvaneu, a Swiss Alpine village. In social science theory, “sense of place” is used as an umbrella concept for manifold people–place relations. The findings reveal that the place characteristics relevant to sense of place are approximately the same for both groups. However, locals and tourists attribute different meanings and significance to these characteristics, and thus have distinct needs regarding landscape development. Consequently, a balance between appropriate economic development desired by locals and the preservation of the cultural characteristics and authenticity sought by tourists must be found when pursuing sustainable landscape development.

Resettlement of peripheral areas (“counterurbanization”) is driving population growth in the central Sierra Nevada of California and Nevada. The present study analyzes the impact of “urban refugees” on socio-economic conditions in rural high mountain regions (above 1800 m). From 1960 onward, the High Sierra counties have ranked among Californian high mountain regions with the heaviest relative population growth. Tourism provides the most important impulse for the diffusion of metropolitan populations to high altitude areas, and constitutes the major source of employment there. People who migrate to the study areas (Lake Tahoe region and Mammoth Lakes area) tend to be white, well-educated, with considerable household earnings, but do not fall into the senior citizen category. There is no doubt that their demand for vacation or permanent homes has increased housing prices enormously. Planning problems that tend to come with settlement expansion in high mountain regions represent a certain potential for conflict between people who have been living here for a long period (more than 15 years) and recent, affluent amenity migrants (“newcomers”). So does the fact that a majority of homes have meanwhile been priced well beyond the reach of people on local salaries. Finally, the study addresses the problem of various attitudes towards planning strategies in the Sierra Nevada.

The development policy context definitely changed after the Millennium Summit and the Monterrey Consensus early this century. Home-made and individual solutions—irrespective of their quality—are increasingly inadequate in a complex and globalized world. Swiss development policy must streamline and profile its strategies in order to retain its edge in terms of comparative advantages and contribute effectively to making the world more inclusive and sustainable.

This current Mountain Partnership activity looks into the potentials of broadband technology for reducing the digital divide and promoting development in mountain areas. It is related to Millennium Development Goal 8 (vi), namely: “to develop a global partnership for development… in cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies—especially information and communication technologies.”

The Altai Republic, known as “the Switzerland of Russia” ( http://eng.altai-republic.ru/), is located on the southwestern edge of Siberia, in the Russian portion of the Altai-Sayan range which continues into Kazakhstan, China, and Mongolia. It is a spectacularly beautiful, unspoiled, and undeveloped land of forests, open rangeland, and mountain peaks up to 4500 m. In 1998, 5 separate nature sites of the Altai Republic were inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site known as the “Golden Mountains of Altai.” About 22% of the Republic's 92,900 km² is in Russian federally protected areas, either as zapovedniki (strict nature preserves, where no human use is ordinarily allowed) or zakazniki (less strictly protected recreational areas). The Altai's 200,000 inhabitants have long been among the poorest in Russia. About 70% of the population is Russian, while about 30% is of Turkic and other native origins, concentrated in the mountainous areas nearest the southern borders. Agriculture, mostly in the form of livestock raising, is the primary occupation.

As a result of global change, mountain areas are increasingly threatened by invasive alien plants. The Mountain Invasion Research Network (MIREN) initiates and integrates surveys, monitoring, experimental research, and management of plant invasions into mountains at a global scale.

Mountains occupy a strategic place in the political ecology of the war in Colombia. The mountains have been converted into places for military operations, and territorial disputes have become the most important discursive and actual scenario in the so-called guerrilla war that has taken place in the country for more than 40 years. One particular discursive construction related to the mountains in the context of war is the category of “refugee place” for armed groups associated with illicit drug production. For many people the mountains are “dangerous territory.” For rural inhabitants of the mountains, life takes place between conflicts. The present essay presents a brief analysis of how mountains are defined by categories and actions in one scenario involving the armed forces. It argues that social representation of mountains in the context of war overlaps with discourse established in anthropology about categories of culture and nature. It presents a point of view based on discourse and social representation of mountains that is becoming crucial for understanding the ways in which territories are controlled and these territories are perceived by local culture.