Investing in Mountains: Innovative Mechanisms and Promising Examples for Financing Conservation and Sustainable Development

FINAL REPORT HERE

Mountain communities have traditionally been stewards of globally significant mountain resources. As more mountain resources are used, downstream beneficiaries have contributed little or no reinvestment in the resources or their traditional stewards, the mountain communities. As a result, mountain resources are being depleted at unsustainable rates, and traditionally self-reliant mountain communities are becoming marginalized. In order to ensure a sustainable flow of resources to national and global populations, policy makers must develop and implement mechanisms which capture and reallocate an appropriate share of benefits from resource outflows to mountain communities.

Building upon a need identified at the UN Conference on Environment and Development, this initiative identifies and describes various innovative mechanisms which have been used to finance conservation and sustainable development of mountain resources. This document is the result of an electronic conference on the subject of investing in mountains. The mechanisms discussed during the conference explore innovative strategies to capture revenue from resource outflows as well as to redirect an appropriate share to the stewards of these resources.

In an effort to promote replication of these mechanisms and to encourage the application of new mechanisms, the report explores the variety of mechanisms which have been used to finance conservation of specific mountain resources as well as the conditions of the social and economic policy environments which have contributed to the success of the mechanism

Case studies from Asia and the Pacific, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and North America enrich this electronic conference report. The report explores innovative mechanisms to finance conservation and sustainable development of mountain resources.

These mechanisms incorporate strategies to generate revenue from the outflow of resources as well as to capture a share of that revenue for those who care for these resources. The conference focused partcularly on methods which can be widely adopted in mountain areas, including property rights, transferable development rights, conservation easements, tradeable water rights, royalties, entrance fees, user fees, tour operator fees, hunting and fishing fees, environmental taxes, regional trademarks, green marketing tools, micro-enterprises, cooperatives, micro-finance, foreign aid, trust funds, debt-for-nature swaps, and mobilization of private sector funds.

The report also looks at specific case studies in which conservation of mountain resources has been financed, and analyses the social and economic conditions which contribute to the success of these initiatives.