They are sources of freshwater, biodiversity, forests, food, energy, genetic resources, cultural landscapes, ecosystem services and local knowledge. They host communities that have learned, over generations, to live with altitude, slope, scarcity, distance, risk and seasonal change. They are territories of life, production, memory, adaptation and innovation.

Mountains are among the essential territorial systems of the planet. Μountains cover 39 million km² - approximately 27 percent of the world’s land surface, as per the UNEP-WCMC classification. They are home to more than one billion people, approximately 15 percent of the global population, and supply freshwater to an estimated half of humanity. They host 25 of the world’s 34 biodiversity hotspots. About 30 percent of Key Biodiversity Areas worldwide are located entirely or partially in mountain areas, and 88 percent of the Earth’s 821 ecoregions include mountains. More than half of the world’s 738 biosphere reserves are found in mountain areas, including 13 transboundary mountain biosphere reserves. These figures are not decorative; they show that mountains are central to the planet’s ecological balance and to the well-being of societies far beyond mountain territories themselves. (FAO / Mountain Partnership, “Why Mountains Matter”; UNESCO / WNMBR Policy Brief on Mountain Biosphere Reserves).

Mountains are also living territories of human adaptation. Over centuries, mountain communities have created productive systems, terraces, pastoral routes, water infrastructures, settlements, sacred places, local varieties, food traditions and forms of collective organisation shaped by altitude, slope, scarcity and seasonality. Their landscapes are territories of work, knowledge and care.

This is why mountains cannot be understood through a single sector. They are integrated territorial systems. Their future depends on the ability to connect water, biodiversity, food systems, forests, cultural heritage, local economies, social cohesion, governance and public policy.

For MountMed, the value of mountains is both universal and territorial. It is universal because mountains provide essential ecological functions for humanity. It is territorial because this value becomes real in specific places: in watersheds, forests, villages, terraces, local products, community memory, productive practices, social ties and the capacity of mountain communities to shape their own future.