Determining how mountain communities in conservation priority areas can benefit from rich local biodiversity through sustainable development has been a challenge to governments throughout the world. The village of Hanlong in western Yunnan China has been developing bird photography tourism to capitalize on the extremely rich avifaunal diversity of the area. In this study, we analyzed the impact of the emerging tourism on local communities' livelihoods and identified the key areas of improvements for wider dissemination of the experiences. Bird photography tourism in Hanlong has contributed significantly to the sustainable livelihoods of local communities by providing a major new source of income, creating local employment opportunities, and reducing local people's dependence on the extractive use of forest resources. In the process, local communities have acquired new knowledge, skills, and social networks. They have also developed new institutions and governance mechanisms, which enable them to better adapt to the changing socioeconomic environment. Bird photography tourism offers new opportunities and hope for sustaining local livelihoods and biodiversity in conservation priority areas. Experiences in Hanlong offer an excellent heuristic example for sustainable community development, adaptation, and transformational change in conservation priority areas. They also contribute to the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals and Aichi targets and thus have value for wider upscaling. Geographical location, local leadership, and external support are all important for the success of bird photography in Hanlong. We recommend that a landscape (including transboundary landscape) approach be adopted to integrate farming practices, other economic activities, and photography tourism. Farming practices and land uses that sustain bird diversity should be encouraged.

Uttarakhand, India, is a dynamic region. It is frequently exposed to natural hazards and is experiencing rapid urbanization. However, the interaction of the increase in people, the built environment, and vulnerability to natural hazards is poorly understood. We model the relationship between urbanization and hazards for 3 cities (Almora, Nainital, and Champawat) and their surrounding subdistricts in the region using a social vulnerability framework. We apply the framework by using principal component analysis to identify socioeconomic vulnerability indicators and built-environment vulnerability indicators. The results show that higher access to assets reduces vulnerability and that larger households are less vulnerable. We also find that the presence of a bathroom and higher-quality building materials are associated with reduced vulnerability. Bathroom presence is more frequent in cities than in surrounding areas, and the quality of building materials was mixed within cities. Access to assets is higher in the cities than in surrounding areas, but households are smaller in cities. These indicators of vulnerability help to close the knowledge gap and identify who is vulnerable and where they live. This analysis continues to expand the conversation about vulnerability to disasters related to natural hazards in mountain regions.

Governance is increasingly recognized as key to sustainability and human wellbeing in mountain social–ecological systems (MtSES). Mountains present particular challenges for effective governance related to their geographic complexities, status as commons, susceptibility to environmental change, and impacts of external political and socioeconomic processes. This study reports on the results of a global survey of local mountain governance. It explored a range of known governance challenges to discover which are most prevalent and whether relative strength of local governance helps to mitigate these challenges. The study analyzed 75 survey responses across 5 continents from researchers and practitioners who work on mountain governance. Major challenges for governance included contradictory policies, poverty, and the presence of valuable nonrenewable natural resources. Compared with sites with stronger local governance, those with weaker arrangements reported significantly greater prevalence of certain challenges, such as corruption. Yet many challenges did not differ significantly by strength of local governance, implicating external factors instead. This finding points to a need to improve governance across levels to support MtSES sustainability.

Much of Canada is covered by vast and diverse mountains, yet numerous fundamental aspects of Canadian mountain systems have yet to be systematically characterized and quantified in a nationally coherent manner. In response, we delineated mountain areas in Canada according to the Kapos et al definition of mountain areas (K1) and then developed a classification scheme that subdivides K1 into 10 major mountain regions within Canada. Using these boundaries, we conducted numerous geospatial analyses using ArcGIS Pro to advance understanding of the biogeography, people, and economic activities associated with mountains in Canada. By providing consistent and comparable information about mountain systems in the country, our results reveal the national and international importance of Canadian mountain systems across a range of environmental and social metrics. They also provide a foundation for the advancement of research, policy, and work on social issues related to mountains in Canada, all of which have been constrained to date by a lack of nationally coherent analytical frameworks and statistics. We conclude by acknowledging the provisional and culturally situated nature of our work and reflect on the need for more inclusive approaches to designing and interpreting analyses aimed at advancing understanding of mountain systems.

Mountainous regions are globally important, in part because they support large populations and are biodiverse. They are also characterized by enhanced vulnerability to anthropogenic pressures and sensitivity to climate change. This importance necessitates the development of a global reference network of long-term environmental and socioeconomic monitoring—mountain observatories. At present, monitoring is limited and unevenly distributed across mountain regions globally. Existing thematic networks do not fully support the generation of multidisciplinary knowledge required to inform decisions, enact drivers of sustainable development, and safeguard against losses. In this paper, the Mountain Observatories Working Group, established by the Mountain Research Initiative (MRI) Science Leadership Council, identifies geographical and thematic gaps as well as recent advances in monitoring of relevant biophysical and socioeconomic variables in the mountains. We propose principles and ways of connecting existing initiatives, supporting emerging areas, and developing new mountain observatory networks regionally and, eventually, globally. Particularly in the data-poor regions, we aspire to build a community of researchers and practitioners in collaboration with the Global Network on Observations and Information in Mountain Environments, Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Mountains, a GEO Work Programme Initiative.

Research to inform a sustainable future for southern African mountains as social–ecological systems requires major investment. This is needed to strengthen existing relationships, build new relationships among academia, policy, and practice, and drive a robust research capacity program. This is particularly important in disciplines where there is currently limited capacity for mountain-related research in the region. For many pertinent issues in southern African mountains, the urgent need for foundational research is a reality; without this, it is impossible to build toward multidisciplinary outcomes and to drive transdisciplinary efforts. Keys to strengthening solution-oriented research are improved coordination between actors in similar disciplines (eg water security), strong relationships to achieve maximum synergy instead of competition, and major investment in emerging young researchers. The Afromontane Research Unit is leading the way for southern African mountains.