For millions of people living in mountainous areas, hunger and the threat of hunger are nothing new. Harsh climates and the difficult, often inaccessible terrain, combined with political and social marginality make mountain peoples vulnerable to food shortages.

As of 2015, one in three mountain people in developing countries was facing hunger and malnutrition.

The 2015 study Mapping the vulnerability of mountain peoples to food insecurity presents a geographic and demographic picture of the world’s mountain areas and assesses the vulnerability to food insecurity of mountain dwellers in developing countries, based on a specially designed model. The final section presents an alternative and complementary approach to assessing hunger by analyzing household surveys.

The results show that the living conditions of mountain dwellers have continued to deteriorate between 2002 and 2015. Global progress and living standard improvements did not appear to have made their way up the mountains and many mountain communities lagged behind the full eradication of poverty and hunger.

This 66-page publication gives voice to the plight of mountain people and sends a message to policy-makers on the importance of including mountain development in their agendas as well as specific measures and investments that could break the cycle of poverty and hunger of mountain communities and slows outmigration from mountain areas.

Updated information available: see the 2020 publication Vulnerability of mountain peoples to food insecurity: updated data and analysis of drivers

The role of heritage territories in mountains

news

A photofilm about three biocultural heritage territories and their role in conserving biodiversity and promoting locally-determined development is now available in a Spanish language version. The six-minute film uses stunning photographs to present the Quechua Potato Park in the mountains of Peru, the Naxi Seed Park in China, and the...

Trailing of the Sheep Festival

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The annual Trailing of the Sheep Festival celebrates for the 20th year in three picturesque venues in Idaho's Wood River Valley: Hailey, Ketchum and Sun Valley. Each fall, the Trailing of the Sheep Festival celebrates the over 150-year tradition of moving sheep, or “trailing”, from high mountain summer pastures down through the...

United Nations General Assembly Report: Sustainable mountain development (2016)

publication

Report of the Secretary-General on Sustainable Mountain Development

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Mountains at the World Conservation Congress

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This year the World Conservation Congress, hosted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), will feature a number of events that address mountains on 1-10 September in Hawaii, USA. The discussions will revolve around the theme of “Planet at the crossroads”, signifying that “the ecosystems...

Agro-ecology training in mountains of Morocco

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Migrations & Développement started a project to train a network of farmers in southern Morocco in the ways of agro-ecology. To resolve two of the challenges that farmers in rural areas of the Moroccan Mountains are facing, namely poverty and the harsh living conditions, and environmental degradation due to...

Newsletter about mountains in Argentina

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The National Mountain Committee of Argentina has issued the 12th edition of its newsletter, which outlines progress made on the Telefood project. Two aspects of the project came to an end in April and in July 2016, respectively. The first was aimed at making students’ diets more healthy at the...