Mountains as the water towers of the world

Abstract

Mountains cover 25 percent of the world’s land surface, and directly support 12 percent of the world’s population living within mountain regions. Sustainable mountain development (SMD) should be a global priority, given the multitude of ecosystem goods and services that mountain provide, not just to mountain peoples but to the millions living downstream.Through their watershed function, mountains supply more than half of humanity with water for drinking, irrigation, industry, food and energy production. However, water and other mountain ecosystem services are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Human activities such as urbanization and infrastructure development further aggravate environmental degradation which affects the quantity and quality of water resources. The degradation of mountain ecosystem services has severe consequences for livelihoods and environments of downstream regions.