Managing Ecosystem Services for Enhancing Climate Change Adaptation in the Hindu Kush Himalayas - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 220

Long-term consistent monitoring of both climate change and biodiversity
The importance and need for establishing long-term, consistent monitoring
of climate change and its impact on ecosystems and people's livelihoods have
been clearly realized. Permanent plots and/or units need to be established
on an altitudinal transect spanning the tropics to the alpine regions in order
to monitor diverse ecosystems. An institutionalized monitoring system,
however, requires standardization of monitoring parameters. In this
respect a consistent, uniform methodology and a network of collaborative
efforts to collect and analyze data and information regularly was made a
prerequisite. Realizing the need for a facilitating institution at a regional
level, ICIMOD has taken on the role by consensus. Academic and research
institutions need to be engaged to establish and maintain the permanent
research plots, carry out the regular monitoring and generate and analyze
the data. The involvement of communities in the respective areas was seen
to be critical in maintaining the plots, in participatory action research and
in carrying out observations and sharing perceptions.
Focussed research on impacts, coping mechanisms and adaptation to
climate change
Documentation on impacts is, as yet, anecdotal for the most part—there
is a need, therefore, to document impacts as well as coping mechanisms
of communities to change systematically. The most promising indicators
seem to be agro-biodiversity, followed by other forms of biodiversity (both
fl ora and fauna). Documentation of changes in crops and their performance
and coping mechanisms of communities, focussing on changes in cropping
patterns, crop shifts and cropping system management should be carried
out on a priority basis. One important aspect requiring documentation
and monitoring is the changes in nutritive value of crops as a result of the
impacts of climate change. Systematic documentation and monitoring,
however, will need a framework of institutional support and re-orientation
of existing government research programs and institutions in regard to
adaptive research.
Assessment of critical habitat linkages, protected area effectiveness,
ecological and social vulnerabilities
In addition to the functional responses of existing protected areas to climate
change (which could provide critical information about responses of natural
systems to change and hence provide benchmark parameters), new critical
habitats and the necessity for linkages of such habitats to existing ones need