Wars, pollution, logging despoil world's mountains

NEW YORK -- Wars, pollution and logging are despoiling the world's mountain ranges -- the Alps, the Rockies and the Hindu Kush are most threatened, according to a U.N. study released Sunday.

Mountains are the "water towers of the world," supplying more than half the world's population, said the report by the Tokyo-based United Nations University.

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.

But nonviolent activities are scarring mountain ecology as well.

The Rockies are being hurt by new home building, skiing and other recreational activities that gobble up virgin lands, the study said. Industrial pollution from toxic mine tailings affects the Colorado Rockies, said mountain expert Jack Ives, who contributed to the U.N. document.

Canada's first national park, Banff -- crown jewel of the system -- faces serious danger of being overdeveloped, Ives said. The once pristine mountain valleys of the Alps "are now a litter of cable cars, ski lifts, tourist facilities and car parks," the study said.

High garbage dump

Climbing expeditions have made "Mount Everest the highest garbage dump in the world," Ives said in an interview.

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, according to the report.

"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 rich plant and animal life and more than half the world's fresh water. The U.N. study is part of that effort.

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.

Water pollution

"The threat of water pollution stemming from developments of all kinds -- including mass tourism -- is growing in the Alps," Ives said. The mountains supply four major European rivers with their flow -- the Rhine, the Rhone, the Danube and the Po.

"The importance of the Alps both in terms of high quality water and hydroelectricity cannot be overstated," Ives said.

Mountains are the major fault lines of today's wars -- partly because many of the natural boundaries they form became national borders during the time of the British and Russian empires 100 years ago.

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 war for a decade 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 now near total disaster because of poverty, drought, deforestation and past 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 water 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," Ives said.