Adaptation to Climate Change in Mountain Regions: Global Significance of Marginal Places - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 148

in the global human-environment system that gives mountain areas their
exceptional relevance.
The particular case for adaptation
The urgent case for adaptation in mountain regions comprises three
arguments. First, the rate of change in which mountain human-environment
systems are affected outpaces any process of natural adaptation. This is due
to the particular circumstances laid out above. Second, mountain societies
need to adapt to the drastic changes that their natural resource base will
undergo if they are to survive. This is due to their high specialization and
dependence on their natural environment. Third, adaptation will have to
occur for the sake of the low-lands. This is due to the inseparable fate of
mountain regions and their adjacent lowlands that results from a multitude
of links most importantly that of water. Here it is particularly an integrated
watershed management and natural hazard prevention must that take centre
stage. However, this cannot be achieved in isolation, but only if mountain
human-environment systems are understood in their complex interactions
and fragility and are targeted as a whole in attempts to strengthen adaptive
capacities and reduce their vulnerability.
As prerequisite for guided, deliberate adaptations (either as a change
in livelihood and resource use, or in form of technological/infrastructural
measures), intricate knowledge of mountain human-environment
systems needs to be established in order to produce adaptive capacity
and governance structures which in turn need to be in place for adequate
adaptation decision making (Smit and Wandel 2006). Given that mountain
regions are already marginal in economic and political terms it is unlikely
that suffi cient efforts to this end can be made by them alone. An active role
in governance, fi nancial support and provision of resources must be taken
on by the economic and political centres of the lowlands in order to help
mountain communities adapt; for their sake but also in order to manage
the knock-on effects that climate change in mountain regions has on the
lowlands themselves. Further impetus therefore is given in the sense of a
moral obligation. Since the marginal economies of mountain regions have
contributed little to anthropogenic climate change, and since they are among
the most vulnerable to its impacts there is duty for the lowlands to engage
that goes beyond self-interest and is a matter of climate justice.
Conclusions
At the beginning of this chapter the polar extremes of various aspects of
global change were roughly aligned and grouped accordingly. It is clear
that these are not alternative pathways in the sense of mutually exclusivity.