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Highlights • Over 70% of disaster-related deaths from 2005 to 2014 occurred in mountainous regions. • Experiences in mountains reveal principles to guide disaster risk reduction (DRR). • Effective DRR addresses both community and ecosystem health. • DRR governance should fit local needs and requires local to global partnerships. • Successful DRR actions focus on capacity building, inclusive knowledge, and equity. Abstract The devastating 2015 earthquakes in Nepal highlighted the need for effective disaster risk reduction (DRR) in mountains, which are inherently subject to hazards and increasingly vulnerable to extreme events. As multiple UN policy frameworks stress, DRR is crucial to mitigate the mounting environmental and socioeconomic costs of disasters globally. However, specialized DRR guidelines are needed for biodiverse, multi-hazard regions like mountains. Ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (Eco-DRR) emphasizes ecosystem conservation, restoration, and sustainable management as key elements for DRR. We propose that integrating the emerging field of Eco-DRR with community-based DRR (CB-DRR) will help address the increasing vulnerabilities of mountain people and ecosystems. Drawing on a global mountain synthesis, we present paradoxes that create challenges for DRR in mountains and examine these paradoxes through examples from the 2015 Nepal earthquakes. We propose four principles for integrated CB- and Eco-DRR that address these challenges: (1) governance and institutional arrangements that fit local needs; (2) empowerment and capacity-building to strengthen community resilience; (3) discovery and sharing of constructive practices that combine local and scientific knowledge; and (4) approaches focused on well-being and equity. We illustrate the reinforcing relationship between integrated CB- and Eco-DRR principles with examples from other mountain systems worldwide. Coordinated community and ecosystem-based actions offer a potential path to achieve DRR, climate adaptation, sustainable development, and biodiversity conservation for vulnerable ecosystems and communities worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a speech by David Molden of International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Kathmandu, Nepal, delivered at the 2011 International Water Resources Association (IWRA) XIV World Water Congress, held in Porto de Galinhas, Pernambuco, Brazil, September, in which he discussed water utilization and management.

Accurate estimates of evapotranspiration across different land uses are a major challenge in the process of understanding water availability and uses in a river basin. This study demonstrated a remote sensing-based procedure for accurately generating evaporative depletion and runoff in mountainous areas using Landsat ETM+ images combined with standard hydro-meteorological data. The data was used as a key input into the International Water Management Institute (IWMI)'s water accounting procedure to understand how water is now used, and opportunities for improvements in the future. We found a higher annual actual evapotranspiration from the riparian forest than from irrigated agriculture in the East Rapti River basin of Nepal. Another important finding of our study is that simple rainfall surplus can be a good predictor of river flow at an ungagged site of the East Rapti River basin. The water accounting analysis revealed that there is the potential for further development of water resources in the East Rapti River basin as only 59% of the total available water is depleted. A critical analysis of social and ecological flow requirements downstream is necessary before any development of water resources upstream. This study successfully demonstrated that the key inputs required for evaluating and monitoring the overall water resources conditions in a mountainous river basin can be computed from satellite data with a minimal support from ground information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]