Prof. Hermann Kreutzmann calls for awareness about marginality and fragility of mountains world over
Prof. Hermann Kreutzmann calls for awareness about marginality and fragility of mountains world over
B.D.Kasniyal
Pithoragarh, March 5
“We need to be aware of marginal and fragile mountain systems worldwide including that of Himalayas as it is only way to find solutions to mitigate disasters and risks in mountain regions of the world,” advised Dr Hermann Kreutzmann, Professor emeritus and eminent mountain ecologist from Germany. He held the Chair of Human Geography at the Freie Universitaet, Berlin until March 2020.
Dr Kreutzmann, who was delivering a guest lecture on the topic of “Marginality, Fragility and Disasters in context of climate change in Himalayas and neighbouring mountains’, at Manas Academy as part of the academic lecture series on deep drive into grandeur of Himalaya, here today.
According to Dr Kreutzmann, fragility and disasters have emerged as primary challenges and constraints in mountain regions worldwide due to seismic and tectonic events and permafrost degradation of usually stable slops of mountains regions of world.
According to the eminent scholar, these events are causing rockfalls, landslides and mudflows and flooding in mountain regions.” Recent studies have confirmed considerable change in seasonality of runoff in snow and glacial dominated river basins,” said Dr Kreutzmann.
“The loss of vegetation cover and soilaffects not only evapotranspiration and precipitation in mountain regions but also livelihood of habitants. At the first sight these detrimental effects seem to be triggered by ecology alone but their inter linkages with agricultural pastoral practices,forest management and extractive industries is obvious,” said the scholar.
“We have taken several generations in realising the connections between environmental and anthropogenic drivers of change,” said Dr Kreutzmann.
” In contract to these challenges before mountain regions worldwide, the mountain research has remain Euro centric and took several decades to go beyond this region and to envisage wide ranged developmental and indigenous strategies in various temperate and tropical mountain areas of the world,” said the scholar.
Dr Kreutzmann further said that the mountain people worldwide have been slowly receiving growing respect for their adaptation embedded in local knowledge being landscape managers and masters of preservation.”Half a century of man and biosphere programme by UNESCO guided research, 35 years of UNDP conferences on environment of development and 10 years of International year of Mountains have led the global community to acknowledging world’s mountains as salient feature of streamlining the future of mountainous communities of world,” said Dr KKreutzmann.
Emphasising the need to timely assess the shortcomings and gains of the last 50 years of mountain activism, he said that the world needs to outline vision to cope future challenges of climate and social changes to strive sustainable mountain development.
“Though many challenges are similar in mountains worldwide, the solutions can be different keeping in mind shrinking available spaces due to high demand of building plots as infrastructure expansion in mountainous regions has increased. He emphasised the paramount role of mountain agriculture traditional land uses, and it’s contribution in eco system services, food security and cash crop production which require a casino approach to safeguard rural livelihood in mountain regions of world,” said Dr Kreutzmann.
He reminded that keeping political conflicts amongst countries making mountainous borders, it needs cross boundary cooperation and professional exchanges amongst such countries.” Be aware of fragile mountain systems across the borders, such countries needs to co-operate to mitigate disasters and risks in their respective mountains regions,” said Dr Kreutzmann.
