Brief by Central Staff
Mountains – April 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
If our part of the world gets more international attention than usual this year, perhaps we can blame the United Nations, which has declared 2002 as “The International Year of Mountains.”
Previous international years of something have included volunteers in 2001, older persons in 1999, and oceans in 1998.
The idea is to use the special year to get people to focus on the relevant problems and issues, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization is running the show.
As the FAO explains it, “the rapid pace of globalization, urbanization, and mass tourism are threatening mountain communities and the resources they depend on.”
So money threatens mountain people? Not exactly, because “worldwide, mountain areas face increasing marginalization, economic decline, and environmental degradation.”
If people visit or inhabit the mountains, that’s a threat, but if they don’t, then the mountains are marginalized and suffer economic decline. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.
According to the UN IYM website (www.mountains2002.org), this special year of mountains should produce more research into sustainable development, tourism, conservation, and the like.
Many of the “expected results” are bureaucratic jargon at best, as with “Progress made in discussions regarding interactions between upland and lowland communities” — whatever that means.
Others sound rather appealing, as with more “income generating activities” and improved “livelihood opportunities.” Perhaps Uncle Sam’s hand (as well as the tentacles of urban water providers) would be lighter with “successful mechanisms in place that ensure local empowerment.”
At any rate, this attention to mountains certainly represents a major change from the attitude expressed by the great historian Walter Prescott Webb in his 1931 work, The Great Plains: “So far as civilization is concerned the mountains are negligible. Unless they contain minerals they are of relatively little importance in the development of human society.”