Sustainable Development of the Mountain Regions of the USSR. The Realities, the Role of Science, and Research Orientations

Abstract

Mountains and highlands account for 26 percent of the territory of the USSR. Over 20 percent of its total population live in these regions. Centralized planning for more than half a century has produced inappropriate mountain resource-use policies leading to serious environmental deterioration, disruption of local cultures, and ethnic unrest. The first part of this paper expands this thesis and provides several examples. The second part gives an overview of the development of Soviet mountain research from the large interdisciplinary expeditions of the 1920s and 1930s, to the introduction of I. P. Gerasimov's constructive geography in 1966, to the absorption of MAB-6 principles and approaches in the 1970s and early 1980s. The most recent stage has seen the beginnings of international and interdisciplinary collaboration through close working relationships with the United Nations University, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, the International Mountain Society, the East-West Center, and the Commission on Mountain Geoecology of the International Geographical Union. The paper concludes with an outline of the new organizational structures required, and an indication of some of the essential approaches, particularly Geographical Information Systems and modeling applications, together with worldwide research collaboration. These approaches will fall within the new spirit of glasnost. The aim will be to achieve fully integrated mountain research and to apply the results to the solution of mountain resource-use problems.