"Mountains Unite!" That was the slogan chosen by the Swiss Agency for Development which spearheaded Switzerland's international activities in connection with the International Year of Mountains in 2002.

Development projects

The Swiss care about other peoples' mountains as well as their own. It was in part thanks to Swiss geography professor Bruno Messerli that the 1992 Rio Earth Summit included a section on mountains, and 10 years later the International Year of Mountains was a direct result of the interest at Rio. (The idea of the Year of Mountains was proposed by Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian country with which Switzerland has close development ties.)

Small mountain states have always attracted Swiss development projects. Switzerland has acquired useful experience in tackling social, economic and environmental issues facing mountain communities, trying always to keep a balance between conservation and development. It is a veritable tightrope - or what German aptly calls a "Gratwanderung" = a "ridge walk."

In Nepal, the Andes and Lesotho, Switzerland is helping mountain farmers in to improve their methods of working the soil, managing water resources and growing food crops. In Kyrgyzstan, Bhutan and Nepal Swiss experts are giving advice about forest management: more than a hundred years ago Switzerland realised the painful consequences of the over-felling of mountain forests, not least in the serious erosion of mountain sides and subsequent landslides.

These projects are part of the fight against poverty and include efforts to increase the earning base of mountain peoples, for example by establishing crafts programmes to enable women to supplement their income by making and selling handicraft.

One long term programme - 10-15 years - currently being carried out by the Bern University's Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) under the auspices of the Swiss Development Agency is the Central Asia Mountain Programme, known as CAMP, based in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. Its aim is to encourage sustainable development in mountain areas, concentrating on Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, but including also Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

The programme operates on three levels: in local villages, in test areas and districts, and internationally between the Central Asian states and beyond. It wants to improve skills, test new approaches to development, and ensure that all those who use mountain resources, at whatever level, have access to relevant information, and are able to participate in planning and decision making.

In Kyrgyzstan, for example, the programme is promoting mountain products. This entails not only cataloguing the products available, but also publicising them and testing them on the market.

One unusual product is yak meat, which is being encouraged in a project of its own. The goal of the scheme is to train 20 yak breeders, who will also learn how to use equipment for process the meat. At the same time there will be a marketing campaign to raise the profile of these products on the local market.

Another project in Kyrgyzstan trained people to collect and process plants for medicinal purposes and for use as dyes.

It is likely that both these projects will figure on a list of the most promising innovations which CAMP will help promote in other areas, in particular by use of the media, as part of one of its key aims, the exchange of useful experience throughout the area.

These are just a few examples of projects in just one branch of activity, in just one programme. All of them involve a range of partners: local groups, national and foreign experts and state bodies.

Research programmes

The CDE has conducted research in several mountainous areas of the world, which feeds into aid projects.

For example, a five year programme in Nepal, which ended in 1999, looked at the impact of mountain tourism in three different areas of the Himalayas: Everest, Annapurna and the Upper Mustang regions. Among the issues it examined was the way in which tourism had affected the standard of living in local communities and what effect it had had on other economic activities. As part of its social research it looked at the role of women in tourism. It also investigated the physical impact of tourism on the environment.

One of the studies, for example, carried out in the Sagarmatha National Park in the foothills of Everest, looked at the demands on natural resources made by the influx of tourists for such things as cooking and heating. It found among other things that the use of wood doubles in the trekking season and called for a greater use of alternative energy sources in order to avoid a collapse of the ecological system.