Dear Readers,
Mountain Research and Development has attained its quarter century jubilee. It is pleasure to be able to contribute this editorial, especially because there are often very good reasons not to ask former editors and founders of journals to do so: the psychology of “ownership” can press very heavily. Fortunately for me, the new editorial team has surpassed all expectations and Pauline, as original co-editor, and I have been led gently by our friends in Berne to shed the sense of ownership and rejoice in what we perceive as the excellent evolution of the last six years.
New subscribers may be unaware of the serendipitous nature of MRD's founding. So I will risk a brief repetition. The journal's origins stem from the International Geographical Union's Commission on High-Altitude Geoecology, Unesco's Man and the Biosphere Project-6, and the Munich Conference on Mountain Environment of 1974. These components, however, were not sufficient in themselves. The passage of a few more years was required until, in the late-1970s, it became apparent that the new mountain project of the United Nations University (UNU) would provide both modest financial support and, equally important, a strong flow of new research manuscripts from the Himalaya and Northern Thailand. Even then, it was necessary to ‘invent’ a publisher—these things usually work the other way around! Thus, as a piece of entrepreneurship, the International Mountain Society was incorporated in 1980 under the seal of the Secretary of State of Colorado, USA, in Boulder. A brief continuation of the journal's history to the beginning of the new millennium can be found in my editorial to Volume 19, Number 4—the moment of transfer to Berne.
In retrospect, I think it was highly fortunate that the original editorial team chose to emphasize both ‘pure’ mountain research and applied issues, and relate these to the political arena. Thus the first issue carried the slogan:
To strive for a better balance between mountain environment, development of resources, and the well-being of mountain peoples.
It appears to me that the post-1999 evolution of the journal has placed it in a strong position to accelerate the search for new mountain knowledge and understanding, both for its own sake and as a means of providing a better scientific base for more suitable policy formulation. Equally, it is well-positioned to provide discussion on resource development successes and failures and to establish a firm platform for the debate of controversial issues. The new journal sections introduced by the Bernese editorial team—Mountain Platform, Mountain Notes, Mountain Media, and Mountain Views—are important additions. They enable the journal to handle controversial discussions on issues such as the impacts of global warming on mountains and mountain peoples, mountain hazards and response, and biodiversity, amongst many others. This is especially commendable at a time when the news media, and even several hitherto respectable international science magazines, have yielded to the fogs of sensationalism.
This serves to contrast circumstances prevailing in 1980/81 with those of today. While the Unesco MAB-6 project, the 1974 Munich conference, and the emergence of UNU's interest in the mountains of Asia, in association with IUCN, tried to demonstrate the importance of mountains in a changing world, the mountain ecumene was marginal to the perceived concerns of society at large. This former marginalization of mountains will probably be a difficult concept for most readers of this journal who are under the age of 40 today. The movement of “mountains” onto the world stage at Rio (UNCED) in 1992, followed by special awareness during the United Nations General Assembly of 1997, and finally, the declaration of 2002 as The International Year of Mountains have altered the situation beyond compare. This change in perception has affected academia but, especially, it has permeated the news media, the development agencies, and the NGOs. It is clearly apparent that Mountain Research and Development has acquired a heavy responsibility and, at the same time, comparably fierce challenges.
So it is a great pleasure to record twenty-five years of progress. The very beginnings were certainly fraught with uncertainty: for the first years the journal was produced in our home in Boulder with our then teenage children and their school friends helping to stuff and address envelopes: very inexpensive labour. The teenagers also provided insights into the newly emerging computer technology as applied to editing and publishing. And overall expenses had to be met very largely by subscriptions alone. In fact, within a very few years the actual sale price of the journal exceeded the value of the “subsidy” and it could be argued that the journal was subsidizing UNU. Without a three-year contribution from the Swiss Development Cooperation and the outside funding of occasional special issues we would have foundered. I am almost envious of the large measure of financial support that is attracted today, but at the same time overjoyed that it is so. I doubt that I will be able to prepare the editorial for the half-century jubilee but I am nevertheless confident that there will be one under the continued care of our friends in Berne and their successors, and the many supporters worldwide.
