Promoting Mountain Biodiversity through Sustainable Value Chains

Abstract

Mountains host about half of the world's biodiversity terrestrial hotspots (Spehn et al 2010) and 30% of all Key Biodiversity Areas (UNEP et al 2020). Mountain biodiversity provides many goods and services to humankind, including food, medicine, and climate and air quality regulation. Yet land use and climate change, overexploitation, invasive species, pollution, and demographic changes are putting mountain biodiversity under pressure. The sustainable management of mountain biodiversity has been recognized as a global priority, and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15 Target 4 is dedicated to its conservation. The Mountain Partnership Secretariat has supported the work of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in the development of the indicator for the mountain target 15.4.2, the Mountain Green Cover Index (FAO nd b), to monitor progress toward the target's achievement. Biodiversity in all ecosystems is in focus in many United Nations (UN) fora, as 2021-2030 is the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and governments are preparing to negotiate the post-2020 global biodiversity framework for adoption in 2021 at the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CoP 15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). To raise awareness of the relevance of mountain biodiversity, it has been chosen as this year's International Mountain Day theme. The Mountain Partnership (MP) at FAO, the only UN alliance dedicated to mountain ecosystems and communities, leads global observance of this UN day.