Posted on 01/30/2002 2:25:21 AM PST by Movemout
NEW YORK — Wars, pollution and logging are despoiling the world's mountain ranges, with the Alps of Europe and the Himalaya-Karakorum-Hindu Kush chain of Asia the most threatened, according to a U.N. study released yesterday.
The once pristine mountain valleys of the Alps "are now a litter of cable cars, ski lifts, tourists facilities and car parks," said the report by the Tokyo-based United Nations University. Climbing expeditions have made Mount Everest "the highest garbage dump in the world," said Jack Ives, a professor at Carleton University in Canada who contributed to the report.
Other ranges, including the Rockies, Cascades and Olympics, are being hurt by new home building, skiing and other recreational activities, as well as industrial pollution from toxic mine tailings, the report said.
Mountains are the "water towers of the world," supplying water to more than half the world's population, but 23 of the world's 27 current conflicts — from Afghanistan to Chechnya and Kashmir — are being fought in mountainous areas and are destroying the environment, the study said.
Canada's first national park, Banff, faces serious danger of being overdeveloped, Ives said.
But commercial and illegal logging and slash-and-burn farming by poor people living in mountain areas are the real mountain ravagers, destroying the forests and increasing the chances of avalanches and landslides, fires and famines, the report said.
"Illegal logging is going on through the forest areas to an extent that is impossible to calculate," Ives said. "Poor Third World countries sell their forests because they are desperate to raise money."
The United Nations has designated 2002 the International Year of Mountains, with the goal of alleviating the crippling poverty among mountain people and spotlighting the importance of mountains as the source of water and rich plant and animal life.
Mountains and highlands cover about a quarter of the globe's land surface and are home to 10 percent of the world's population, or 600 million people.
Ives said "the threat of water pollution stemming from developments of all kinds — including mass tourism — is growing in the Alps," which supply four major European rivers — the Rhine, the Rhone, the Danube and the Po.
Mountains are the major fault lines of today's wars, partly because many of the natural boundaries they form became national borders.
• The Himalayan crest forms the boundary between India and China, which fought a border war.
• In Kashmir, the Himalayan frontier between India and Pakistan is a flash point.
• In the Caucasus Mountains, Russia is fighting its second war against Chechen separatists in a decade.
• The mountainous Balkans were aflame with a decade of war between the Serbs and the Croats, Bosnians and Slovenians.
• The Hindu Kush in Afghanistan, the Karakorum and western Himalayan range embracing Pakistan's northern areas are near total disaster because of poverty, drought, deforestation and actions by military and repressive governments, the report said.
"It was convenient 150 years ago to define these boundaries in no-man's land," Ives said. "But the world has changed, and we find important mineral and waters resources in those mountains."
"We need to develop resource-management policies and to help the poor people in the mountains, because this is the source of so much of the conflict."
Eight other mountain ranges in Europe, Asia and North America were also cited as under great stress.
• The Rockies and Coast ranges of western North America, which includes the Cascades and Olympics, due to increasing pressure from recreational activities, such as skiing, and home-building in prime mountain land.
• Great Smokey Mountains in the eastern United States, because of air pollution.
• Amber Mountains in Madagascar, where 80 percent of forests have been lost to farming, mining and charcoal production.
• Snowy Mountains of Australia, where 250 plant species were threatened by a series of warm winters.
• Western Carpathians/Tatra Mountains in the Slovak Republic and Poland, affected by air pollution and growth of tourism from surrounding urban areas.
• Sierra Chincua in Mexico, winter home of the monarch butterfly. The forest is being lost to logging and farming.
• Pamir mountains in Tajikistan. Civil war has led to widespread devastation and poverty.
• Hengduan mountains in southwest China. A ban on logging and a push to develop tourism threaten mountain cultures.
The United Nations created U.N. University in 1973 to promote research into global issues such as the environment.
Information from Reuters is included in this report.
The once pristine mountain valleys of the Alps "are now a litter of cable cars, ski lifts, tourists facilities and car parks," said the report by the Tokyo-based United Nations UniversityUnited Nations University?
Just send in a few of our hotdog pilots from Aviano AF base in Italy...
So, mankind has taken barren useless wilderness and made it into a playground. Leave it to the U.N. to find a way to see this as a problem. This is idiocy. Deforestation of some mountain slopes can cause problems, no question. But cable cars??? If ever there was a case of a bureaucracy creating a problem to justify its existance, this is it.
Tired of this cr@p?
Sign these:
American Policy Center on-line Declaration of Independence from the U.N.
Online Petition to Get The US Out of The UN
Online Petition to Get The US Out of The UN. ... Posted by jkm on May 24, 1999
at 22:59:23: ONLINE PETITION TO GET THE US OUT OF THE UN. ...
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