Sacred mountain: not all the news from Africa is bad.

• Author: French, Hilary

There's a place in Africa where ice lies directly on the equator. Twelve glaciers--all of them shrinking--follow striated ridges up the rocky flanks of Mount Kenya, which rises 5,119 meters (17,058 feet) into the East African sky. If you should visit from other parts of the world, look for a great solitary cone that bears a striking resemblance to two other mythic mountains, Mount Rainier and Mount Fuji, but is more than 2,000 feet higher than either of them. To the Kikuyu people who have lived around it for at least three centuries, Mount Kenya is the dwelling place of God.

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Mount Kenya is also regarded as an extraordinary place by biologists, ethnoecologists, and development experts, who see this mountain as the epicenter of a critical experiment--the outcome of which could have important implications for the future of the continent. Mount Kenya is home to a rich array of biological wealth, including at least 882 plant species and a wide variety of wildlife--including elephants, black rhinoceroses, giant forest hogs, and highly threatened mountain bongos--that inhabit the surrounding forest lands. The region became a national forest reserve in 1932 in the midst of the country's colonial era, and portions of it were protected as a national park in 1949. In late 1997, the United Nations designated the Mount Kenya National Park and some of its surrounding forests a World Heritage Site in recognition of their extraordinary natural beauty and ecological importance.

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This region is home not only to an abundance of nature, but also to a large number of people, many of whom live in poverty. People and nature have sometimes come into direct conflict in the area. In the early spring or late summer, bush elephants periodically emerge from the forest to raid farmers' crops--and have been known to wipe out a 10-acre farm in one night. Conversely, people seeking income through illegal activities such as logging, charcoal production, and marijuana harvesting have often set up operations in parklands, which can accelerate deforestation and increase the risk of forest fires.

But there is also growing recognition in the region that the future of the local people and that of their rich mountain ecosystem are inextricably intertwined. The experiment now under way seeks to replace destructive exploitation, whether by rampaging elephants or trespassing loggers, with a diverse economy in which the mountain's unique ecosystem provides key ecological services while the people learn a range of new skills aimed at protecting the ecosystem and producing new sources of income. With guidance from an initiative called Community Management of Protected Areas Conservation (COMPACT), Kenyans are engaged in new programs to provide fresh water to both people and crops, reforest degraded slopes, stop illegal logging, introduce more energy-efficient cooking stoves, provide new jobs in beekeeping or ecotourism, and keep elephants out of farmers' fields. COMPACT programs have also been established at five other World Heritage sites on four continents.

I had a chance to witness some of this renaissance when I traveled to Kenya last year, primarily to attend an annual meeting of the world's environment ministers--the Global Ministerial Environment Forum of the...