MOUNTAINS ON THE MOVE.

• Author: Taylor, David
• Position: Mountain Forum

An innovative on-line forum is transforming the topography of local development and conservation in remote communities around the world

The paths of San Nicolas Totolapan in the Sierra Madre are less than ten miles south of Mexico City's busy streets. The hillsides remain more or less as they were when the name was just Totolapan, a Nahuatl word meaning "place of wild turkeys" (perhaps from the ancient tradition of taking turkeys up the mountain to sacrifice for rain). The paths were scored into the hillside by generations of foot traffic. For centuries, the steep paths, at over nine thousand feet elevation, have given access to the upper fields and firewood high on the slope. Now they lie directly in the way of the city's hungry sprawl.

The paths mean different things to different people. For some, they are paths to the past, still used by local people. For others, they mean remoteness. For Antonio "Febo" Suarez Bonilla, with Consultoria Balam, a small group that promotes community-based tourism, and others in the area, the paths have become a way to preserve the nature of these hills as well as attract mountain-bike travelers. In 1996 Suaez set out to develop the paths and the hills of the ejido (common land held in the traditional system of land tenure) as a mountain-biking attraction that could, if managed well, preserve the area front urban sprawl by giving the land new value. As the San Nicolas park web site says, "Sustainable tourism is an important tool to help to promote conservation of biodiversity, since it gives added value to the integrity of ecosystems."

There was just one problem: Nobody there had experience with bike trails. The Mountain Forum, an innovative on-line community, helped foster an exchange last year across thousands of miles, between Consultoria Balam and the International Mountain Biking Association (IMBA), in Boulder, Colorado, so that the two groups could pool their experiences.

Since 1995 the Mountain Forum, with support from the Swiss government, has grown to be a voice for mountain people worldwide, from the Andes to the Himalayas. In a few years the on-line forum has brought over twelve-hundred professionals on five continents together for e-conferences, campaigns for business and policy reform, and broader advocacy. The forum's work builds on the mountains chapter ("Managing Fragile Ecosystems: Sustainable Mountain Development") of the Earth Summit's Agenda 21, a blueprint for international action, published by the UN in 1992 following the Rio de Janeiro conference.

Thanks in part to the Mountain Forum's members, the UN has designated 2002 as the International Year of Mountains. The Mountain Forum's managers say the group's on-line discussion and conferences have "been transformational for many mountain activists and professionals who once worked in isolation."

Mountain activists? What does a villager in Peru have in common with someone in northern India? Forming a group based on home topography strikes an outsider as a little odd. Yet Mountain Forum members find they have much in common. For one thing, mountain dwellers often share a second-class status that has kept them at the edge of most national political agendas. The remoteness of most upland communities has often shaped the contours of their cultures, and limited their access to public resources (despite the fact that mountain resources--especially streams and forests--are often appropriated by "flatlanders"). Most impoverished societies are found in mountains. Plus, more than half the world's hot spots of biodiversity are in mountains, where varied topography and microclimates have created rich adaptations in plant and animal species.

In the case of San Nicolas and IMBA, both groups shared concerns for conservation and local economic and cultural health. The exchange showed how people in vastly different mountain settings can learn from each other, and specifically, about nature-based tourism.

In the Mountain Forum, members have exchanged different approaches to similar problems, ranging from economic policy to cultural misunderstandings. The group's dialogue aims to change how people view mountain life and open new channels on, for example, ecotourism as a way for mountain people to gain control over their livelihoods. Ecotourism is by no means new. It's in the on-the-ground details that the forum offers insights to members, for instance, codes of conduct for travelers. The rules of the road on the bike paths of the San Nicolas park urge riders to use open trails only, leave no trace, and never spook animals. Llama packers in Peru's Huascaran preserve have adopted a slightly different set.

The Mountain Forum is a very loose, flexible cyber gathering, which suits its members just fine. It wasn't until last fall, over four years after...