The term ‘global sustainable mountain development’ refers to the collective efforts aimed at promoting sustainability and addressing the specific challenges faced by mountainous regions worldwide. Kyrgyzstan, as a mountainous country initiated a declaration of 2002 as the International Year of Mountains in 1998 and made significant contributions towards solving problems in such regions through various initiatives and collaborations. Mountains are vital hotspots that encompass a wide range of valuable resources, both natural and cultural, hosting unique and diverse ecosystems and livelihoods. Therefore, it is crucial to address the specific challenges faced by mountainous countries and promote sustainable development within the Global Mountain Agenda.

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Looking back at decades of rising awareness of mountain challenges and constraints in the framework of a half-century-long Man and the Biosphere Programme by UNESCO, and anniversaries such as 30 years of the UNDP Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro and 20 years since the inauguration of the International Year of Mountains, it is high time for assessing the achievements and shortcomings over these years and for projecting a future vision for coping with climate and social changes and striving for sustainable mountain development. Coping strategies need to be adapted to local conditions; many challenges are similar, but solutions can differ over a wide spectrum of policy-making and development-package designing. Shrinking available spaces in conjunction with high demand for building plots, infrastructure expansion, tourist facilities and leisure and recreation areas have increased the existing tension with mountain agriculture’s paramount role in traditional land use. Its valuable contribution to ecosystem services, food security and cash crop production requires a cautious approach for safeguarding rural livelihoods. Enhanced out-migration and other forms of multi-directional mobility affect the maintenance of cultural and natural landscapes. Political conflicts in border regions indicate an urgent need for negotiations and reconciliation on the way to creating cross-boundary cooperation and professional exchange on the path to sustainable mountain development.

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The mountain ecosystems of Kyrgyzstan possess significant value due to their unique characteristics and ecological importance. These environments are home to a diverse range of flora and fauna, including species that are endemic and exclusive to these specific mountainous regions. Furthermore, these territories have a historical association with pastoralism, which has shaped the cultural and socio-economic settings of the country. Aligned with the Global Environmental Agenda, biodiversity conservation measures such as the establishment of protected areas play a crucial role in preserving habitats for rare and flagship species. These initiatives require the active involvement and dialog of numerous stakeholders and actors within the wildlife management of Kyrgyzstan. Collaborative efforts among them and finding an ecological balance are necessary for long-term sustainable mountain development while ensuring the well-being of local communities and securing their livelihoods. Therefore, the objective of this study is comprehensively to assess and understand Kyrgyzstan’s environmental agenda for wildlife management, recognizing its characteristics, and highlighting the ongoing processes and challenges.

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We captured sika deer in the Northern and Southern Japanese Alps and monitored their seasonal movement patterns in the surrounding area. The daily air temperature in early June reached 5°C and the plants’ growing period persisted for four months. Alpine sika deer are thought to stay in the alpine zone from the plants’ early growing period. The alpine sika deer observed stayed in the alpine zone to feed on alpine vegetation and Betula forest understory. The autumn migration of these alpine sika deer started in September. These adult sika deer repeated the same seasonal migration pattern each year. One sika deer exhibited a long-distance dispersal movement, with a straight-line distance and actual distance between its natal range and post-dispersal range of 74 km and 131 km, respectively. This evidence of long-distance dispersal of sika deer may explain the expanding distribution of sika deer in central Honshu.

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This paper takes Oze Wetland as a case study area known as a mountain tourist destination and outlines the characteristics of the natural environment of the Oze Wetland and the history of its use. It then clarifies how to respond to shifts in user preferences. The history and environment of Oze reveal the geological value of Oze as a wetland facing a rapid decline in its wetland environment and has come to symbolize the nature conservation movement in Japan. In addition to this, various efforts such as programs to educate visitors to carry their waste with them have been developed as a response to changes in the natural ecosystem and changing user preferences. In recent years grazing damage to vegetation and destruction of floor vegetation due to an increase in Japan’s sika deer population has become a serious issue and this paper examines the possibility of establishing a fund to protect the wetland.

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The year 2022 marked the fiftieth anniversary of UNESCO’s World Heritage (WH) program, with 1,157 cultural and natural sites listed based on 10 criteria. The list has earned global conservation kudos, but unfortunately the WH sites’ effectiveness in endorsing heritage has resulted in increased visitor numbers, placing more pressure on already environmentally fragile sites. Enhanced monitoring is fundamental to tackling such threats, so IUCN launched its WH Outlook in 2014, featuring a triennial inventory of all natural WH sites. This paper focuses on the Asia region, unpacking the monitoring indicators used to assess the effectiveness of natural WHS management at those natural WH sites in 2014 and during two subsequent updates in 2017 and 2020. The results add site-specific context by looking at green-flagged examples from Japan, including Shiretoko, Ogasawara and Amami, along with the red-listed Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra in Indonesia. The results in this paper also suggest that the third monitoring outlook saw improvement in some sites compared to the 2014 and 2017 outlooks, which suggests that the reports could serve as a benchmark for assessing the effectiveness of the management of each respective natural site. There is still room for improving the current IUCN Outlook protocol, such as providing much more comprehensive reports on each site, that could point the way from red-listing to green. The findings of this paper may provide insights for future IUCN Outlooks, specifically towards fulfilling area-based targets in the Global Biodiversity Framework adopted during the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD-COP15) in 2022.

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Tateyama is a preserved natural area featuring several types of vegetation from 1,000 to 3,000 m above sea level. The development of tourism in the 20th century had strong impacts on its natural environment. Greening was necessary to stabilize land that had been left bare by road construction. A unique method of greening was adopted, using local plant resources. However, roadway construction resulted not only in disturbance to the vegetation but also unintentional introduction of invasive plants. A movement to remove the invasive plants was organized in 1980 with several volunteer groups continuing these efforts to this day. Such activities have been based on local values. Global standards for nature conservation have been established recently, but local values may also work efficiently in sustainable promotion and should be evaluated.

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A 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal on 25 April 2015, followed by its largest aftershock of magnitude 7.3 on May 12. This series of earthquakes killed nearly 9,000 people and injured more than 22,000 others, damaging more than 800,000 buildings across Nepal. This paper provides ethnographic material on the situation at the time of the earthquake and its aftermath in Village P, located in a mountain tourism destination in the Solukhumbu District of eastern Nepal. By tracing the recovery process of the village, I argue that recovery from the earthquake damage was accomplished mainly through a network established by the tourism industry and that several characteristics of mountain tourism destinations have positively affected the process. Based on such data, I explain that the vulnerability that characterizes mountainous terrain is also linked to its resilience and argue that disaster prevention measures, and development projects in general, in mountainous areas should be promoted using an approach that takes advantage of the intrinsic resilience of mountainous environments.

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Tourism is one of the major contributors to Nepal’s Gross Domestic Product. The history of tourism in Nepal dates back to the 1950s when foreign mountaineers started to visit the country for its summits. As a result, Nepal gradually established itself as a mountain tourism destination. Therefore, mountains became inseparable from tourism in the country. However, these mountains are now severely affected by glacial melting and other unprecedented and unpredictable extreme hazardous events, which are mostly related to higher temperatures and changes in precipitation, and which pose threats not only to mountains but also to mountain communities and the tourists visiting the mountains. There is an urgent need to assess and understand the processes and components of mountain ecosystems to make these area safe and sound eventually for the visitors and local communities. Also, there is an urgent need for recommendations that can be implemented to minimize risks in mountainous regions and ensure the safety of visitors and local communities. For this, first we review major hazard incidents during the last few decades in the mountainous regions of Nepal. Then we suggest possible modalities for sustainable land-use planning and sustainable trekking-trail planning to the major stakeholders, including policy makers and the scientific community. In addition, we discuss the need for joint efforts toward preparedness for glacial and mountain hazards to ensure the safety of everyone in the mountain tourism community. We also discuss the importance of introducing a geopark system for Nepal’s hazard and disaster sites to offer educational tourism.

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Geoparks constitute projects that promote the protection of heritage sites with geological, geomorphological, rock, fossil, mineral and other earth-science value, as well as to educate the public and promote sustainable development in each region. There is a strong relationship between mountains and geoparks in terms of geological structure, topography, natural disaster characteristics and the cultures these have nurtured. This paper first introduces Tateyama Kurobe Geopark and Itoigawa Geopark as examples of such a relationship. It then describes the current status of geotourism at Tateyama Kurobe Geopark and mountain geotours at Itoigawa Geopark. Nature in the mountains brings not only blessings, but also disasters. Many mountain geoparks in Japan have developed geopark activities with disaster prevention themes. Mt. Kurikoma Area Geopark is introduced as an example. In addition, this paper emphasizes the importance of cooperation between geoparks in Japan and other countries to train and educate young people at their respective geoparks.

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This paper first presents primary mountain-related activities in Japan that have taken place beyond the International Year of Mountains (IYM) in 2002. Subsequently, it summarizes the prevailing issues related to mountain environments in Japan, particularly based on the discourse at the IYM+20 Symposium held in December 2022, and discusses the path towards the future sustainability of the mountain environments and development in Japan. One of the most notable achievements highlighted in this paper is the establishment of Mountain Day (yama-no-hi in Japanese) as a national holiday in Japan. This reflects the longstanding and close connection between the Japanese people and mountains, while the establishment of Japan’s Mountain Day is also linked to the fact that many challenges persist regarding the mountains. In the future, Japan will grapple with an increasingly severe decline in birth rates and an aging society, a situation that has never been encountered before. This will require a new strategy for addressing mountain-related issues. This paper concludes by summarizing the discussions at the symposium and identifying the key issues that need to be addressed based on emerging science and technology.

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