Redeveloping Mountain Landscapes as Cultural Cradles of Biodiversity

Having depleted much of the biodiversity located in the larger plains of the globe for meeting with industrial development and the linked urbanization that humans have witnessed during the past over a century, much of the remaining biodiversity is now largely confined to the mountain regions, more so to the developing tropics. Realizing that: (i) societies living in the mountains still try to relate and identify themselves with a ‘natural cultural landscape’ that they have carved out for themselves; (ii) these mountain landscapes, in the contemporary context, form the last outposts of biodiversity ‘hotspots’; (iii) conserving and sustainably managing this biodiversity is critical to address the rapidly emerging environmental uncertainties not only of the mountain people but the humanity at large; and (iv) realizing that sustainable management of ‘natural cultural landscapes’ is an effective route towards conservation of biological diversity (sub-specific, species, ecosystems and landscape), efforts should be directed towards sustainable management of mountain cultural landscapes. We have shown, based on work done over the last four decade, that this can be effectively achieved only through building bridges between ‘knowledge systems’ (‘formal’ and ‘traditional’ ecological knowledge) so as to ensure participation of all stakeholders.

In this context, this article deals with the unavoidable steps that the scientific community at large will have to take to ensure stakeholder (policy planners, developmental agencies and more importantly mountain communities themselves) towards effective management of ‘natural cultural mountain landscapes (Ramakrishnan, 1984, 1992a).