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MOUNTAINS AND PEOPLE IN CLIMATE CHANGE


Mountain regions have a crucial impact on weather patterns, precipitation, and snow and ice. They are also salient early warning systems that enable people to monitor and learn how we may adapt to climate change. Like the polar regions, they are characterised by greater changes in temperature than the global average (UNEP, 2010).


Recent satellite observations have confirmed that glaciers in many mountain regions are thinning (Berthier et al., 2007; Paul et al., 2007; Bolch et al., 2008a, b) and the majority of mountain glaciers worldwide are losing their mass (Kaser et al., 2006; Lemke et al., 2007; Arendt et al., 2009; Bhambri & Bolch, 2009; Nicholson et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2009; Yang et al., 2009; Yao et al., 2007; Caidong and Sorteberg, 2010; Federici et al., 2010; Kaser et al., 2010; Liu et al., 2010; Peduzzi et al., 2010; Shahgedanova et al., 2010; Shekhar et al., 2010; UNEP, 2010).


Effects of intensified land use, demographic shifts and climate change pressures are increasing the occurrence of events of water related disasters in downstream areas. Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and the frequency of flash floods have also increased in recent times (Cenderelli and Wohl, 2003; Richardson and Reynolds, 2000; Carey, 2005; Chen et al., 2010; Dussaillant et al., 2010). Within the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region, such changes have great regional variability (Immerzeel et al., 2010; Pellicciotti et al., 2010), spatial variability and immense socio-cultural diversity. This variability and diversity has important implications in terms of adaptation responses.


The Hindu Kush-Himalayas supplies water resources, together with the monsoons, for irrigation – some 75-90% of the water consumed for over 55% of Asia’s cereal production and nearly 25% of the world’s cereal supply (UNEP, 2009). Correspondingly, mountain regions worldwide supply water to livestock and clean drinking water to billions of people around the planet (UNEP- WCMC, 2002; 2004). However, they also have another crucial resource in a changing world: mountain people.


Over 210 million people inhabit the Hindu Kush-Himalayas and about 1.3 billion people populate the water basins located downstream. Mountain peoples’ livelihoods are based on agriculture, livestock raising, management of natural resources, migration, labour-intensive household management and income generation through small scale trade, and wage and casual labour (Leduc and Shrestha, 2008). For millennia, mountain people have learned to adapt to changing seasons and extreme weather conditions (ibid.), while planning for regular disastrous events of too much, too little water and extreme temperature changes that affect their wellbeing and survival (UNEP, 2004; Rhoades, 2007; ICIMOD, 2009a).


Simultaneously, this situation has generated experiences and adaptation techniques relevant to such crucial aspects as disaster preparation and mitigation, food security and planning capacity, especially for water storage (Leduc, 2009; Salick et al., 2009; UNEP, 2010). For instance, farmers in several Himalayan contexts, such as in the Mulkrow Valley in Chitral, northern Pakistan, are now increasing food and water storage capacities to better prepare for floods and droughts (Dekens and Eriksson, 2009).


There are signs that increasing climate variability may pose challenges to indigenous knowledge in terms of new modes of coping with environmental stress (ICIMOD, 2009a, 2009b). For instance, climate change will have impacts on the entire hydrological cycle in mountain areas (Eriksson et al., 2009), strongly exacerbating existing challenges and pressures of land use where they exist, demographic changes and other


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