Mountains play a crucial role for both the highlands and lowlands, but are particularly vulnerable to climate change and human interventions. This policy brief focuses on ecosystem restoration in the mountains. It highlights the role of healthy mountain ecosystems and their services and provides a set of recommendations to help design effective restoration plans. It also reflects on the achievements made during the last 20 years.

Land degradation results from weak policies and tenure laws, as well as from unsustainable land management,
including uncontrolled grazing, deforestation, intensive farming, or even inappropriate afforestation. Additional
trends such as population growth and rapid economic development, leading to increased u rbanization and haphazard
infrastructure development, may further contribute to land degradation in mountain environments (Moreda, 2018).
Land degradation also has a negative impact on the livelihoods of mountain communities as it seriously impacts agriculture, and endangers the sustainability of crop production, animal husbandry, and water security (Chettri et al., 2021).

Globally, approximately 311 million people (half the rural mountain population in developing countries) live in areas exposed to progressive land degradation. In turn, an increase in land use change, such as the transformation of natural land cover into farmlands and grazing lands that are not well-managed, as well as into human settlements and urban
centres, stresses soil fertility and the water cycle, thus exacerbating surface run-off, soil erosion, and landslides in
mountains (FAO & UNCCD, 2019).