International Mountain Day (IMD) is celebrated annually on 11 December to raise awareness of the importance of mountains for life, highlight opportunities and constraints in mountain development, and build alliances that will bring positive change to mountain peoples and environments around the world. Mountains are home to 15% of the world’s population and contain nearly half of the world’s biodiversity hotspots.
On the occasion of International Mountain Day, we focused on biodiversity, extreme conditions and climate change in high mountain biosphere reserves at the WNMBR online meeting. We currently have 759 biosphere reserves in 136 countries, on 6 continents: North America – 63, South America – 118, Africa – 114, Asia – 185, Europe – 258, Oceania – 8. Their area covers 9.5 million km2. Terrestrial biosphere reserves are made up of forests (41.32%), shrubs (19.90%), grasslands (8.07%), tundra (1.01%), wetlands (1.59%), impervious surfaces (artificial structures such as parking lots, sidewalks, roads, etc.) (0.67%), bare soil (14.13%), ice and snow (0.67%). We have 64 mountain biosphere reserves, whose territory of 80,000 km2 is covered by glaciers. At the same time, 41.88% of plant species and 40.81% of animal species from the IUCN Red List occur in biosphere reserves.
Mountain Biosphere Reserves will also be given attention at the 5th World Congress of Biosphere Reserves (WCBR) and the 37th session of the International Coordinating Council for the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme in China in 2025 (https://english.cas.cn/newsroom/news/202210/t20221013_321534.shtml).
Veronika Piscová, 10.12.2024