Biophysical environmental elements which once sustained and were sustained by viable cultures are now being reduced into resources for exploitation, with the peoples and their cultures being made into the means, or seen as obstacles to, this exploitation. Communities' forests, waters and lands are being degraded or lost altogether and their cultures eviscerated of their content-knowledge of the environment, its utilization and care; ritual, symbols and meanings; role in guiding, socializing and educating the young; record of history and sense of the future; and so forth. People are being alienated from their own lands, their cultures and their being; and their previous autonomy and diversity is being turned into marginality and poverty within expanding market and states.

Conservation and development policies and interventions have consistently failed to attend to the intimate, complex and necessary interrelationship of the geographical, biological and cultural diversity of the mountain region. Externally driven development efforts introduced into indigenous areas have tended to be designed indiscriminately by outsiders and shaped according to outside values, priorities, and practices.

Development interventions assume that indigenous systems are "primitive," "backward" and "unproductive" and aim to replace them with a "scientific" system. Activities have emphasized infrastructure development to facilitate transition to a market economy and improve access to markets. Chemical fertilizers, pesticides, hybrid seeds, mono-cropping, and bank credit have been introduced into upland agro-ecosystems to intensify the use of resources and increase production of cash crops. But their intensive use has polluted soil and water resources, significantly reduced the abundance of both fauna and flora, and resulted in human poisoning in the mountain watershed. Also they've led to increased agricultural debt, growing inequality, and the disintegration of communities and breakdown of their ability to sustain their members, particularly women and other vulnerable groups.