19. Risk Complexity and Governance in Mountain Environments

Mountain environments have been subject to a disproportionate number of disasters and their complex geo- and social-ecological systems pose significant challenges for managing risk from natural and other hazards. The evolution of disaster risk in mountain environments and the governance response to hazards and vulnerabilities is described using examples from the Himalaya, Andes, Alps and North American Cordillera. While the potential for hazardous processes always has been inherently high, the social-ecological systems have evolved rapidly from relatively discrete and isolated pockets of population, subsistence land uses, and commodity exchange to larger, diversified social structures and economies. This has magnified exposures and vulnerabilities, eroded physical and socio-economic isolation, and broadened the need for pro- and reactive risk governance both within and beyond the mountains. Needed is risk governance that: incorporates local resources and needs with those at the national and international scales, recognizes spatio-temporal dimensions and process cascades in risk, and creates the conditions for building resilience in risk-prone social-ecological systems.