Mountain regions occupy more than a quarter of the Earth's land surface, about one tenth of the human population live in them and they supply important services (such as water, timber, agricultural produce and hydro-electric power) to more than half the world's people. Mountain environments are complex and fragile and their valuable biodiversity often vulnerable. Mountain people are often marginalised and yet land/resource use in mountain regions has important wider environmental and economic impacts. Therefore, there is a high priority need for improved participatory management and conservation of resources in mountain environments. This must be informed by local people's knowledge of ecosystem composition and structure and the abundance of species of local value. Since such knowledge may differ between different economic and cultural groups and between the genders there is a need for this participation to be appropriately stratified both between and within communities. Up to now biodiversity evaluation has been too dominated by narrow scientific approaches with insufficient inclusion of local perspectives, which have an essential contribution to conservation. International initiatives resulting from the Convention on Biodiversity have tended to neglect the sustainable utilisation of biodiversity.

Institutions charged with resource management in mountain regions, such as the MCP, have urgent requirements for the participatory identification of priority areas for biodiversity conservation, and planning and management of appropriate forms of protection/utilisation/management of biodiversity resources in different areas. This requires: optimal collection, integration, analysis and use of spatial biodiversity information in situations where resources are scarce; and an ability to assess the long-term impact on biodiversity of different forms of utilisation and disturbance. This activity must be participatory, and all stakeholders must be able to exchange accurate information about: identification of biodiversity elements; their valuation and evaluation of different components of biodiversity in order to agree on their management of it.

Improved participatory identification, assessment and evaluation of biodiversity in tropical mountain regions; stakeholders enabled to communicate and negotiate about biodiversity conservation/use issues; leading to improved participatory planning and management of biodiversity.

Improved methods for identification, assessment and valuation of mountain biodiversity developed and promoted:

* Improved methods in the development and extension of tools for field-identification of plant biodiversity, particularly to support participatory approaches, developed, tested and demonstrated - with applicability to the range of mountain socio-economic and physical/biological environments.

* Simplified and optimised techiques for participatory biodiversity assessment, management plan prepartion and monitoring in complex and fragile tropical mountain environments, through biodiversity data collection, storage, analysis and use (using appropriate GIS/other software), developed, tested and promoted.

• Improved methods for the evaluation of biodiversity by stakeholders in complex and fragile mountain environments, by the use of socio-economic and ecological indices of biodiversity value, developed and promoted.