Enhancing livestock productivity while protecting mountain ecosystems

Mountain ecosystems are a major source of the world's biological diversity, water, energy, and forest products. About 80% of the planet's fresh water supplies originate in mountain areas. Many of the world's most important food crops evolved in the unique micro-ecologies found in mountain valleys. Mountains account for 20% of the world's landscape and are home to at least 10% of the earth's people. However, management of their natural resources affects over 40% of the world population that live in adjacent ecosystems (chapter 13, Agenda 21). Mountains are also frequently
associated with grinding poverty. Some of the poorest people in Latin America live in the southern Andes of Peru and Bolivia. Most of China's absolute poor are ethnic minorities living in remote mountains, mainly in the Hindu Kush-Himalayas.