Abstract
Against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic, mountain environments as remote locations entail both, the advantages of providing space and distance and the disadvantages of particular vulnerabilities being isolated and far from sophisticated health services. In general, rural mountain communities have high indicators of structural vulnerability: high poverty rates, lack of basic services, high rates of informal and unpaid employment, weak access to education and health systems, lack of proper settlement planning, aging demographic structures, and low connectivity. In addition, people who migrated to urban centers before COVID-19 often settled within areas that are more susceptible to the effects of the crisis, and therefore they might be forced, or they choose, to return back to their rural homelands. These territories are also particularly at risk from natural hazards and climate change impacts. At the same time, the pandemic has reconfigured the dynamics of mountain communities worldwide by deepening specific structural weaknesses, but also by generating various opportunities based on collective governance structures, food production systems, and livelihoods, solidarity, local and indigenous knowledge. From a comparative perspective, this paper gathers voices reflecting on the interconnected, systemic nature of risks in mountain regions of the world in the context of climate change and in which ways these were modified by COVID-19. Case studies from the Ecuadorian Andes, South Africa, and Kurdistan (Iraq) are analyzed and results are presented.