91Â鶹¹ú²ú¾«Æ·×ÔÅÄ

Agriculture and pastoralism are essential sources of livelihoods for people in rural mountain areas where an estimated 1.1 billion live. 

As elevation increases, soils become shallower and less fertile, with lower temperatures that limit biological activity. The result is that 45% of the world’s mountain areas are not suitable for growing crops, pastoralism or carrying out forestry activities. Also, cultivation areas are small, and there is limited use of mechanization.

Despite the challenges, mountain communities have developed valuable traditional knowledge and techniques in crop cultivation, livestock production and water harvesting that help to sustain entire ecosystems. Indigenous Peoples living in mountains have unique local knowledge, traditions and cultural practices that contribute to sustainable food systems, land management and biodiversity preservation. Throughout the world, terrace farming is widely practised on the slopes of mountains to be an important source of food production and livelihood income generation for smallholder farmers.

Climate change affecting rainfall variability, along with global warming leading to glacier and snow-melt, will increasingly affect mountain water availability, posing challenges to farmers in the mountains and to irrigated agriculture downstream. Over time as glacier mass reduces, annual runoff initially increases within glacier-fed basins and rivers. After some years or decades, a certain point is reached – referred to as peak water– after which runoff from glacial meltwater declines as glacial mass decreases, leading to decreased water availability for irrigation and agriculture. There is strong evidence that peak water has already passed in the glacier-fed rivers of the Tropical Andes, western Canada and the Swiss Alps.

Reductions in snow cover can affect agriculture also through direct effects on soil moisture. This reduction has been reported in Nepal, where less snow cover has led to the drying of soils and lower yields of potatoes and fodder.

Responses to climate-driven impacts in mountains include some adaptation interventions, which include changing farming practices, the development of infrastructure including water storage, the application of Indigenous knowledge, provide capacity-building for the communities and the adoption of ecosystem-based adaptation measures.