Covering one quarter of the Earth’s surface and home to at least one in ten people, mountain ecosystems are unique centres of cultural diversity and essential reservoirs of biological diversity, as well as the source of the world’s great rivers and the providers of fresh water. However, mountain peoples are among the poorest and the hungriest in the world, and mountain regions are among the most vulnerable to environmental degradation, urban development and climate change.
Despite their importance throughout human history and their wealth of resources, mountains have only recently begun to attract the attention of political decision-makers and economic planners. National and international law-makers have similarly failed, until recently, to take an interest in mountain areas. It was not until 1991 that the Alpine Convention, the first transnational agreement relating to a mountain range, came into being, and the first national laws in this area were passed only a few years before that. Mountain law is, thus, still in its infancy: only a few mountain-specific legal instruments, national and international, are currently in place.
The first part of this publication looks at the development of this type of legislation. It broadly describes mountain-specific legal texts, first in the international sphere, then at the domestic level. Although there are many other laws which also affect the legal status of mountains, such as agricultural, forestry, soil, watershed, environmental, tax and land use planning laws, the study focuses only on those legal frameworks that are specific to mountains.
The second part of the publication contains six short case studies from Bulgaria, France, Georgia, Italy, North Ossetia-Alania (Russian Federation) and Switzerland, where legislation specifically dealing with mountains has been passed or developed. The country studies are intended to illustrate in some detail the main features of mountain law outlined in the first part.
