Mitigating global environmental problems requires most societies to focus on sustainability. To support the corresponding reorientation of priorities, researchers need to complement their rather isolated investigations of individual phenomena with studies that involve humans more deeply. The scientific community must continue to contribute to both the accumulation and the implementation of knowledge. To effectively translate knowledge into action, all actors and all parties affected must be involved. Because international agreements on measures to mitigate key problems of global change are very difficult to reach, they must be complemented by regional views, which have a much greater chance of enactment. The syndrome approach evoked in this article—which is based on an earlier collaborative study—is a research framework that can provide the necessary scientific basis for regional decisions within a global context. It seems particularly appropriate for identifying and tackling problems of global change in mountain regions.
