Geographic Information (GI) for Sustainable Mountain Development in the Hindu Kush-Himalyan (HKH) Region

The Hindu Kush-Hiamalayas (HKH), extending from the mountains of Afghanistan to Myanmar, represents world's highest mountain ecosystems with youngest geological formation and a land of diverse human cultures, religions, indigenous traditional systems, and socio-economic conditions. Majority of the population in the region live in poverty and depend upon the fragile natural resources for their livelihoods. The HKH mountains offers important ecosystem services to life support such as wide range of bio-diversity and medicinal plants, fresh water reserve and hydropower, minerals and pristine and spectacular views that are potential for ecotourism. Rapidly growing population, development of infrastructure, exploitation of natural resources bases combined with global warming phenomenon are creating pressures on mountain ecosystem. The mountain ecosystem is facing simply unsustainable human practices leading to depleting natural resources base and causing environmental degradation. The International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) has been working as the only regional center for sustainable livelihoods of the mountain people and promoting economically and environmentally sound development of mountain ecosystems in the HKH region. It has been working as a facilitator for generation and sharing of mountain specific information and knowledge. Many issues of mountain development such as environmental degradation, deforestation and soil erosion, poverty and migration, floods and sharing of water resources have strong geographic component and geographic information in particular bears a significant role in sustainable decision-making.