news

• news archive

contact us

donate to tve

tve home

Mountains are the world's water towers feeding the rivers and lakes upon which all life depends. As Executive Director of UNEP, Klaus Toepfer summed up, mountains play a central role in collecting and storing water. Because of their size and shape, they intercept air circulating around the globe and force it upwards where it condenses, thus providing rain and snow. All the major rivers in the world - from the Rio Grande to the Nile - have their headwaters in mountains. As a consequence more than half the world's people rely on mountain water to grow food, produce electricity and most importantly, to drink. Each day, one of every two people on the planet quenches his or her thirst with water that originates in mountains. One billion Chinese, Indians, Bangladeshis, 250 million people in Africa, and hte entire population of California, USA are among the 3 billion people who rely on the continuous flow of fresh clean mountain water.

Mountains are also home to one in ten people, cover one fifth of the earth's surface land, and occur in 75% of the world's countries. They also harbour as much or more biodiversity than any other areas in the world. So, water issue aside, it now starts to become clear as to how mountains affect every single one of us in more ways than one could possibly imagine. Yet, war, poverty, hunger, climate change and environmental degradation are threatening the web of life that mountains support. The stakeholders are not just the people who live on the mountainside, but just about everybody on the planet.

As this is IYM, TVE has just launched its own Mountain Month in support of this. It will run until 27th October 2002 and is dedicating one month of its programming to looking at the plight of mountain people, with a series of programmes on the BBC. Working in close partnership with FAO,  UNEP and the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre and The Aga Khan Development Network, TVE is taking a lead role in generating public awareness with Mountain Month both through its programming and website.

The United Nations declared 2002 as IYM in recognition of the crucial role that mountains play in all our lives. "Wherever we may come from, however high or small the hills or mountains may be in the land of our birth, we are all mountain people. We are all dependent on mountains, connected to them, and affected by them, in ways we may never have previously imagined," FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said at the Global Launch of IYM. "…as we begin commemorating the International Year of Mountains, conflict may be the single greatest obstacle to achieving our goals. Without peace, we cannot reduce poverty. Without peace, we cannot guarantee secure food supplies. Without peace, we cannot even consider sustainable development."
 

The Bishkek Global Mountain Summit (BGMS) in Kyrgyzstan will be the final global event of IYM 2002.
“If the International Year of Mountains could be described as a crown, the Bishkek Global Mountain Summit would be among its brightest jewels,” says Douglas McGuire, head of the International Year of Mountains Coordination Unit at FAO.  “It’s at Bishkek that we will solidify the International Partnership for Sustainable Development in Mountain Regions and draw together all of the ideas and recommendations raised at conferences and meetings throughout the Year.”
 

Some of the main topics to be discussed at the BGMS are:

• International and regional agreements and cooperation.
• National policies and institutions for sustainable development.
• Legal, economic and compensation mechanisms in support of sustainable mountain development.
• Sustainable livelihoods and poverty alleviation
• Tourism and the conservation and maintenance of biological and cultural diversity.
• Conflicts and peace in mountain areas.
• Mountain infrastructure: access, communications, energy.
• Promotion and integration of education, science and culture in mountain protection and development.
• Water, natural resources, hazards, desertification and the implications of climate change.

Together, the IYM and the BGMS' objectives are to "guarantee the present and future of mountain communities by promoting the conservation of sustainable development of mountain regions" (FAO 2000). It is an opportunity to take steps to protect mountain ecosystems, to promote peace and stability in mountain regions and to help mountain people attain their goals and aspirations. By taking care of the world's mountains, we help to ensure the long-term security and survival of all that is connected to them, including ourselves.

“Like the earth’s oceans and rainforests, mountains are fundamental to life itself,” says FAO’s Director-General, Jacques Diouf, at the launch of the International Partnership for Sustainable Development in Mountain Regions, announced at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. “The way forward, I believe, is to break the challenges down into smaller issues, and for each of us to contribute what we have and what we do best. This requires collaboration of all of us – governments, UN agencies, Major Groups and the private sector.”

The TVE broadcasts started on 28th September 2002, with four 30 minute documentaries and one 45 minute overview programme on the eve of the Bishkek Summit. These programmes will be broadcast a total of 24 times during the IYM month as follows:
 

WEEK	UPHILL STRUGGLE SERIES	TRANSMISSION TIME
30-09-02	Summit to Sea - Part 1	Mon: 21.30 Tue: 01.30, 09.30 Sat: 18.30 Sun: 07.30
07-10-02	Summit to Sea - Part 2	as above
14-10-02	Angle on Hunger	as above
21-10-02	Where Families and Mountains Meet	as above
26-10-02 and 27-10-02	Uphill Struggle - Summit to the Sea 44' Special	Sat: 08.10, 12.10, 19.10 Sun: 15.10

When we talk about mountains, all the following major issues come into play:
Biodiversity, Climate, Conflict, Energy, Forests, Gender, Hunger, Policy & Law, Poverty, Tourism, Water. In the following programmes, all these issues will be touched upon.

Summit to Sea - Part One (Himalayas, Tanzania, Japan, Ecuador)

Himalayas
The Himalayas are the tallest mountain region in the world, but they are under threat. The glaciers are melting. Were Sir Edmund Hillary to climb Everest again today, he would find that the glacier which originally started by his base camp has now retreated 5km. The melting of these huge glaciers causes a grave threat of massive flooding.

Tanzania: Kilimanjaro
Within 15 years the ice-capped peak of Africa's highest mountain may have gone. But for the million people who live on its slopes the main concerns are competition for water supplies and land. Angella Fidelisi has worked on the mountainside all her life. She has nine children and her husband is terminally ill. "I always come to the forest so that I can pay my children's school fees, and their food and their clothing. All the villagers who don’t have jobs come to the forest to find firewood to sell it in the market to make some money." This harsh competition has resulted in severe deforestation. Stripped of vegetation, soil on steep slopes ends up in the Indian Ocean on Kenya's coast. Now Kenya's coral reef is choking. The local children have been running successfully a tree conservation project for the past ten years, but they cannot stop global warming. Soon many of them will have no choice but to migrate to lowland cities, disintegrating entire communities and cultures.

Japan
Though one of the most densely populated countries in Asia, 70% of Japan is forested, almost entirely in the hills and mountains. The spiritual qualities of mountains to the people of Japan cannot be quantified. In Japan mountains are revered as the home of the Gods. Yoshinobu Emoto from the Japanese Committee for IYM says, "We believe that to climb up to the mountains gives pureness and happiness to our families". To damage the mountains is tantamount to desecrating an entire culture.

Ecuador
The hills of Junin are rich in copper and other minerals, and the mining companies know it. Local people already fought off one mining corporation, "we organised ourselves and decided to set fire to their campsite ... Had the mine been opened, the village would not be there. It would be replaced by 200 hectares of tailing ponds full of cyanide, arsenic, copper, chrome and lead. ... If there is ever mining here we will do it again. We are absolutely determined to give our last drop of blood fighting against mining in our natural reserve of Junin." However, despite the locals' action, the mining concession is still up for sale to the highest bidder and the locals fear that no account will be taken of their environment. They are preparing to mobilise again.

 
The second programme in our Mountain Month series is: Summit to Sea - Part Two, where we continue our travels and meet mountain people, this time in Italy, Lesotho, Kenya and Ecuador.
 

Following Summit to the Sea, we change destination and follow Canadian director James Heer to Africa and South America to find out why the hungriest people live in the mountains in, Angle on Hunger.
Although mountain people represent about 12 percent of the world's population, research recently completed at the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) suggests that a much as half of the mountain population in the developing world and Commonwealth of Independent States – from 250 to 370 million people – is vulnerable to food insecurity and malnourishment.. Gregorio farms in the Peruvian Andes - 4,500 metres above sea level. Each day he wages war against gravity in an ongoing battle to grow the only food that will survive at such heights - potatoes. Like many mountain people, the foods he eats contain far fewer calories than he needs.  In the Ethiopian mountains, Aselfech is an out-of-work single mother who can't feed her children because her culture forbids her from ploughing her own land. Instead she must hire a man to plough for her and, in return, pay him half of her harvest. What she has left will feed her children for just three months of the year.  The rest of the time she depends on food aid, and many days feeds her children nothing more than bread and coffee. Getabelew lives in a world where the only thing he needs to survive is the one thing his country has run out of - land to farm. In many Ethiopian mountain communities, as much as 30% of the local population is landless. In order to survive, many cut and sell trees from the country's few remaining forests, further contributing to the degradation of local farmland. These are the stories of mountain people. At the world's highest altitudes it's not the lack of oxygen that takes their breath away, it's the lack of food.
 

During the third week of Mountain Month TVE will be showing Where Families and Mountains Meet - an intimate portrait of three families in Kyrgysztan and  Tajikistan which documents their hardships in the wake of the collapse of Soviet subsidies. With help from the Aga Khan Development Network, the people there now are using renewable mountain energy, creating small businesses and markets, and growing seven times the amount of food they used to grow under the old Russian collective system. The whole story is told through the people themselves.

TVE's final programme in Mountain Month will be Uphill Struggle, a summation programme looking towards the Bishkek Summit and focussing on the aims of the IYM.

If you would like to order any copies of the programmes featured in the Mountain Month series, please email sales@tve.org.uk

tve is a collective name for Television for the Environment and Television Trust for the Environment. Television for the Environment is a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales (registered office 21 Elizabeth Street, London SW1W 9RP, company number 1811236)and a registered charity (charity number 326585). Television Trust for the Environment is a registered charity (charity number 326539).