Mountain Laws and Peoples: Moving Towards Sustainable Development and Recognition of Community-Based Property Rights.

Mountain peoples, many with thousands of years of experience living and working in their rugged environments, are overlooked stewards of fragile landscapes that support over ten percent of the Earth's population, and protect the watersheds that ensure freshwater for more than half of humanity. The high variability of mountain ecosystems makes them home to irreplaceable global treasures of biological diversity -- a diversity that is protected by mountain communities whose traditional lifestyles depend on intimate knowledge and sustainable use of their natural environment