High mountain areas are experiencing some of the earliest and greatest impacts of climate change. However, knowledge on how climate change impacts multiple ecosystem services that benefit different stakeholder groups remains scattered in the literature. This article presents a review of the literature on climate change impacts on ecosystem services benefiting local communities and tourists in high mountain areas. Results show a lack of studies focused on the global South, especially where there are tropical glaciers, which are likely to be the first to disappear. Climate change impacts can be classified as impacts on food and feed, water availability, natural hazards regulation, spirituality and cultural identity, aesthetics, and recreation. In turn, climate change impacts on infrastructure and accessibility also affect ecosystem services. Several of these impacts are a direct threat to the lives of mountain peoples, their livelihoods and their culture. Mountain tourism is experiencing abrupt changes too. The magnitude of impacts make it necessary to strengthen measures to adapt to climate change in high mountain areas.

https://bioone.org/journals/Mountain-Research-and-Development/volume-37/issue-2/MRD-JOURNAL-D-16-00110.1/Climate-Change-Impacts-on-Ecosystem-Services-in-High-Mountain-Areas/10.1659/MRD-JOURNAL-D-16-00110.1.pdf

Climate Change Impacts on Ecosystem Services in High Mountain Areas: A Literature Review

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https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/D4285C8F6E9C47D040525BDD2140575A/stamped-9781009157971c2_131-202.pdf/high-mountain-areas.pdf

High Mountain Areas

Incremental adaptation may be inadequate to deal with rapid shifts and tipping points for food production under climate change. The concepts of transformative and transformational adaptation have emerged in recent years to address the need for major, non-marginal transitions in sectors such as agriculture in response to climate change. However there is less empirical evidence of transformation in practice. Here we use a simple semi-quantitative definition to identify recorded cases of transformational adaptation in response to climate change. A structured search of academic literature found 23 empirical case studies that meet our criteria for transformation of agriculture under climate change: a response to climate risks along with a redistribution of at least a third in the primary factors of production (land, labour, capital) or the outputs and outcomes of production over a time period of 25 years or less. The case studies offer experience-based lessons on managing transformative processes in agriculture at all four stages of the adaptation cycle: understanding goals and objectives, developing a vision and pathway, implementing adaptation actions, and monitoring, evaluating and learning. In general, the case-study processes of transformation have diverged from well-managed, inclusive approaches based on foresight and continual learning. Our review provides little early evidence that transformative adaptation processes in response to climate change have generated more resilient agricultural systems or improvements in governance. Governments and development partners could improve the effectiveness of outcomes through providing more comprehensive and long-term approaches to adaptation planning alongside financial and technical assistance, within a framework that rewards farms as multi-functional systems.

/pdf/transformation-in-practice-a-review-of-empirical-cases-of-541h2qncbo.pdf

Transformation in Practice: A Review of Empirical Cases of Transformational Adaptation in Agriculture Under Climate Change

http://www.the-innovation.org/geoscience/main/bdueditor/asp/file/202306/TIG1-0619-Climate-Review-032.pdf

Climate change: Strategies for mitigation and adaptation

There is a growing recognition of the contribution of the cryosphere to human societies. This is especially important in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH), where poverty and vulnerability are high and climate change impacts on the cryosphere are strong. However, there is a lack of synthesized knowledge about the contributions of the cryosphere to high mountain communities. This paper uses a cryosphere service framework—a derivative of the ecosystem service concept—to classify different goods and services provided by the cryosphere. Case studies were selected using an adapted systematic review methodology. These studies were then synthesized and examined through the lens of critical political ecology. The review shows that while the cryosphere provides a whole range of goods and services for mountain communities, not all of these are well documented. Material services like the supply of water for irrigation and agriculture, and disservices such as disasters, are better documented than non-material services like the spirituality of landscapes. The majority of the case studies do not use an interdisciplinary lens. While some studies on irrigation discuss the physical basis and human organization of irrigation, the literature on disasters mostly focuses on the physical processes and at most generalized loss and damage assessments. Further, most case studies do not use the critical epistemologies needed to examine how politics, power, and intersectionality influence societal responses to changes in the cryosphere. The paper suggests that future studies adopt interdisciplinary collaboration to understand human impacts and adaptive responses through critical political ecology frameworks.

/pdf/contributions-of-the-cryosphere-to-mountain-communities-in-ddae2ir6y0.pdf

Contributions of the cryosphere to mountain communities in the Hindu Kush Himalaya: a review

Rapid climate change in the Himalaya threatens the traditional livelihoods of remote mountain communities, challenges traditional systems of knowledge, and stresses existing socio-ecological systems. Through semi-structured interviews, participatory photography, and repeat photography focused on climate change and its impacts on traditional livelihoods, we aim to shed light on some of the socio-cultural implications of climate related change in Manang, a remote village in the Annapurna Conservation Area of Western Nepal. Observed changes in temperature, precipitation, permanent snow cover, and glacial extent directly inform villagers’ perceptions of and adaptations to Himalayan climate change. Adaptation strategies include a shift from traditional agropastoral practices to a more diversified blend of agropastoralism, tourism services, and cash-crop production. Climate change has tipped the scales in favor of the production of fruits and vegetables, cash crops previously unsuitable to the local cl...

Adapting in the Shadow of Annapurna: A Climate Tipping Point

Based on two decades of our ethnobotanical and alpine plant ecological research on Himalayan climate change, we use system dynamics modeling to integrate our results for insights into long-term trends. Himalayan climate change is perceived by traditional peoples, who adapt, mitigate, and integrate these changes into their cosmologies. Himalayan alpine vegetation is also responding quickly to climatic changes: mountain vegetation is proliferating with lower elevational species moving into alpine areas, while high alpine areas – at the elevational limit of plant life – are being colonized by endemic species. At lower elevations, the model predicts reduced pasturing and increased agroforestry and tree and crop introductions. With the invasion of non-alpine plants and agriculture, there will likely be reduced habitat for alpine species. At high elevations, the model predicts displacement of alpine meadows and yak grazing to yet higher elevations. Medicinal herb collection, a major economic activity, will likely expand and subsequently experience overharvesting. Yak grazing at increasingly high elevations may stress the animals, the pastures, and the herders. Tourism may put yet further pressure on highest elevational habitats. Indigenous peoples will be forced to adapt rapidly by both traditional and contemporary means including the use of indigenous knowledge, agricultural innovation, and development of tourist economies, which can also be threatened by climate change as mountains lose their snowy and glacial beauty. Abandonment of previously adaptive indigenous cultures and out-migration may be strategies of last resort.

Indigenous Knowledge and Dynamics Among Himalayan Peoples, Vegetation, and Climate Change

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Adapting in the Shadow of Annapurna: A Climate Tipping Point

Indigenous Knowledge and Dynamics Among Himalayan Peoples, Vegetation, and Climate Change