Adaptation Frameworks for Climate Change—Eloquent to Himalayan Ecosystems - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 155

This chapter reviews available climate change adaptation frameworks
and identifi es their applicability for the Himalayan ecosystems. The authors
expect this will provide a comprehensive set of information to the decision
makers for developing region specifi c adaptive policy and researchers to
analyze the importance of these while recommending more models relevant
to adaptive capacity to climate change.
Vulnerable Himalayan Ecosystem
Mountains occupy a quarter of the global land surface area (about 25 million
km 2 ) and homes 12% of the world's population (GTOS 2008). In these
regions, livelihoods are highly dependent on climate-sensitive resources.
For example a vast area of the HKH region consists of rangelands, where
30 million people depend on livestock for their livelihoods. Similarly, in
different zones of Indian Himalayas, communities are dependent on forests,
alpine grasslands and also snow covered landscapes. A growing number
of studies from these regions suggest that in many areas more than one-
third of total cultivated land has been abandoned (Khanal and Watanabe
2006) due to such factors. Principally the agriculture is in these regions is
categorized as subsidence, of which up to 90% is rain-fed and accounts for
70% of regional employment and livelihoods. These communities already
struggle to cope with the current state of water availability, soil fertility
and production rates. The projected extreme weather events and climate
variability would further enhance the vulnerability in these regions. Thus
there is a direct linkage between climate variables ecosystem services and
human beings (Fig. 6.1). Himalayan regions, including the majority of
developing countries are in tropical and sub-tropical regions, areas predicted
to be seriously affected by the impacts of climate change. The Himalayas
are expected to warm by 2.7°C/ 3.8°C according to B1/A1F1 scenarios
(Nogues-Bravo et al. 2006). This is compounded by the fact that developing
countries are often less able to cope with adverse climate impacts because
of poor economic conditions and is exacerbated further by the impacts of
environmental change (Grabherr et al. 1994, Körner 1999).
In the recent past decades, many natural disaster-related deaths
occurred in the developing countries and 90% of all natural disasters were
climate, weather, geology and water related (Reddy and Assenza 2009).
Indeed, continuing land pressures, rapid urban development and settlement
of the impoverished in exposed low-lying areas greatly infl uence fl ood risks,
health and livelihoods. More than 40% of the world's fl oods takes place
in Asia, and have affected near a billion people (in 1999-2008) causing an
estimated 20-25% of all deaths associated with natural disasters (Kaltenbom
et al. 2010). In 2009, more than 56 million people were severely impacted
by fl oods and over one million people by the smaller, but often dangerous