Full papers must be submitted by 1 August 2017; please submit a brief notice of intent beforehand.

Mountain ecosystems provide food, water, and energy to over 900 million people living in mountain
regions. An even larger population living in the lowlands depends on these crucial mountain ecosystem services too, especially water and energy. The connections between food, water, and energy constitute a complex system that interacts with mountain ecosystems in manifold ways; decisions about 1 of these resources can have significant consequences for the other 2 and for mountain ecosystems in general.

Population growth, changing lifestyles and consumption patterns, and climate change increase the pressure on mountain ecosystems, threatening the sustainability of their essential functions and services. At the same time, competing demands, disparate interests, and inequitable access to resources are causing growing conflicts.

Water, energy, and food should thus not be addressed as single services; nor should their interconnections and interdependencies be considered without reflecting on the environmental, political, institutional, economic, and sociocultural factors that shape them. Integrated management of resources has been wellexplored to date, but often without explicitly addressing the trade‐offs involved in delivering the 3 ecosystem services in a sustainable and equitable way—especially with regard to mountains.

MRD aims to increase understanding of this complexity and the resulting trade‐offs in mountain contexts, and to provide insights into sustainable development options for managing the interplay between water, energy, food, and mountain ecosystems. MRD is looking for contributions for its 3 peer‐reviewed sections:

MountainDevelopment (transformation knowledge): Papers should present well‐validated and evidencebased experiences of negotiating synergies and trade‐offs among water, energy, and food, and planning and implementing related development options in mountain regions.

MountainResearch (systems knowledge): Papers should analyze and discuss the dynamic interplay
between water, energy, and food, and the interactions of these interconnected services with mountain ecosystems; another focus of papers could be the analysis of how political, institutional, economic, and sociocultural factors influence the system’s dynamics.

MountainAgenda (target knowledge): Papers should provide well‐referenced overviews of discussions of, and insights into, the links between water, energy, and food for all in mountains; they should conclude with agendas for future research or policy aiming at increasing the equitability and sustainability of trade‐offs and synergies in mountain areas.

Submission details
- Please e‐mail your notice of intent indicating your main research question, your conceptual framework, and your methodology to the Editorial Office at: mrd‐journal@cde.unibe.ch
- Submit your full paper by 1 August 2017
- Guidelines for authors are available at: http://www.mrd‐journal.org/submission_GAuthors.asp
- For more information on the journal, see: http://www.mrd‐journal.org
- As a not‐for‐profit open access journal, MRD charges authors a publication fee to offset part of its
production costs: http://www.mrd‐journal.org/About_pubfee.asp


10.07.2017