Mountain People, Forests, and Trees: Strategies for Balancing Local Management and Outside Interests.

Forests play crucial roles in the sustainable development of mountain regions, which are home to about one tenth of the global population. Mountain forests help to capture and store essential atmospheric moisture, to regulate river flow, and to reduce erosion and sedimentation downstream. Over half of humanity relies on fresh water from the mountains.

Mountain forests are also important sources of wood: valuable as timber and particularly as a fuel source for both mountain people and those in nearby foothills and plains. Yet many mountain forests are subject to high, often unsustainable, levels of logging and clearance for agriculture. The highest rate of deforestation in any biome is in tropical upland forests: 1.1 percent per year.

Most of the world's mountain communities are strongly influenced by surrounding lowland and urban areas with regard to timber extraction, watershed management and, often, recreation and biodiversity conservation. The interests of these outside forces do not necessarily include a sustainable future for either mountain forests or mountain communities.

Finding an equitable balance between the demands of lowland populations and the needs of mountain communities is an increasingly urgent priority. There is also a strong need to balance productive use of forests with their protection