Mitigation and adaptation to climate change and water stress

People living in mountain regions across the world are used to environmental change and are regularly dealing with too much or too little water, both conditions often occur- ring within the same season or within short periods of time. Hence many mountain peoples have developed a series of strategies for dealing with a dynamic environment and have considerable adaptive capacity. For instance, many Himalayan farmers are now increasing food and water storage capacities to better prepare for floods and droughts (Dekens and Eriksson 2009). However, most mountain regions are now experiencing greater ranges and rates of change, that likely will stress and in many cases exceed the adaptive capacities of the social-ecological systems.

There are also signs that increasing climate variability is ex- ceeding the traditional knowledge of how to cope with en- vironmental stress (ICIMOD, 2009a–b). Furthermore, the upstream-downstream linkages and the high dependence of lowland communities on upland water resources is becoming a critical issue of global proportions. Climate change will have impacts on the entire hydrological cycle in mountain areas (Eriksson et al., 2009) and high mountain glaciers will play a significant role in the uncertainty of future water supply. Fu- ture adaptation will need to be planned through state and oth- er formal institutions, as well as through autonomous actions, i.e. actions and strategies by people in their local environment.

The predicted climate changes will require massive adaptation in upstream as well as downstream locations. While fatalities and extreme events such as GLOFs may catch extensive me- dia attention, it is clear that the required responses to climate change and variable water flow from high mountains must be of different types and on different levels. Vast numbers of people are affected in some regions by floods and droughts, in the case of Asia up to hundreds of millions each year. In contrast, relatively few people are actually killed by these di-

sasters. For instance in one district in Western Nepal floods killed 26 people in the year 2008, but more than 2000 houses were completely damaged and 13 000 houses were partially damaged, and large food reserves were lost (Dixit et al., 2009).

Floods and other disasters lead to serious health risks, deg- radation of livelihoods, food insecurity and general decline in quality of life. Short term responses will in many cases still be disaster management, but in the medium and long term per- spective the focus must be on adaptation to significant changes in environmental conditions and runoff from high mountain glaciers and watersheds.

Vulnerability is already high and imminent in many moun- tain regions as well as in downstream plains housing large portions of the world’s population and it will increase in the future as the populations in exposed areas increase and as the effects of global warming are felt in these areas. In the Hima- laya as well as the Andes, droughts and flooding will become more common, as will wind and cyclones, diseases and pests, soil erosion, and losses of soil organic matter (IIED, 2009; Leduc, 2009). Even in the Alps, a fairly prosperous region,

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