"A mountain becomes great as a human personality does,
by extending its influence over the thoughts,
words, and actions of mankind."

- R.L.G. Irving, 1940, in "Ten Great Mountains"

Mountains make up one fifth of the Earth's landscape and are home to at least 10 per cent of the world's population. Mountain peoples, in their sloping islands of human and natural variety, have become the guardians of irreplacable global assets. At least half of humanity depends on mountain watersheds for their supplies of fresh water. For more than 1 billion people, mountains are sacred places.

All over the world, expanding economic pressures are degrading mountain ecosystems while confronting mountain peoples with increasing poverty, cultural assimilation, and political disempowerment. As a part of a global movement to increase the focus of sustainable development on mountain areas within the framework of Chapter 13 of Agenda 21, "Managing Fragile Ecosystems: Sustainable Mountain Development," a series of consultations took place between March 1994 and September 1995, culminating in the establishment of the Mountain Forum.The Organising Committee of the Mountain Forum is a tripartite consortium consisting of the Mountain Institute in West Virginia, the International Potato Centre in Lima, and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu.

The Mountain Forum is an integrative, participatory, and cross-cutting network of mountain people, professionals, and organisations. It seeks to catalyse global action towards equitable and ecologically-sustainable mountain development by providing a forum for mutual support and for the exchange of ideas and experiences. By understanding and building on our strengths as a community, innovative partnerships can emerge to implement the Mountain Agenda. As a link between people, the Forum is committed to an open constituency and to democratic, decentralised, and flexible operations.

A Forum Member can foster mutual support by sharing and exchanging both successful and unsuccessful experiences as well as lessons of monitoring, evaluation, and assessment; directing sources of information useful or relevant to the global mountain community; and working with other members to form partnerships and undertake joint research activities at local, regional, and global levels.

The Mountain Forum, an alliance of regional networks, has successfully built upon existing networks to host a wide array of activities and to bring lessons learned in the field into policy discussions at both national and international levels. The Regional Node of the Mountain Forum for Asia and the Pacific is the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), an interdisciplinary centre with a geographic focus and mandate in integrated mountain development, in Kathmandu, Nepal.

As a facilitator of information exchange on issues relating to sustainable mountain development, ICIMOD coordinates the Asia Pacific Mountain Network (APMN), an informal forum for information exchange and knowledge sharing on the sustainable development of mountain areas in the Asia/Pacific region among people and organisations working in or associated with these areas. The Mountain Forum in Asia and the Pacific is currently being built upon the resources and linkages of the APMN and has demontrated that the mountains of this region are a source of pride and concern for a great number of people, both within and outside the region as membership continues to grow.

Mountain Forum Organisational Structure