Concept

The Climate Change has stressed the high mountain ecosystems through higher mean annual temperatures and melting of glaciers and snow and altered precipitation patterns.  These changes are disrupting the hydrological regimes of mountain headwaters; affecting adversely the availability of water both for drinking and food production; and increasing frequency, severity and intensity of extreme weather events, particularly in developing countries. Furthermore, climate change is intensifying the impacts of other drivers of global environmental change and resulting into decrease in agricultural production, frequent crop failures, loss of rural livelihood, and consequent decline in community food purchasing power. This is exacerbating the limited capacity of mountain socio-ecological system to cope with projected risks of climate change and climate change induced natural disasters. The long-term impacts of these changes will not only of direct relevance to the mountains, but they will have serious implications for downstream regions as these will increase the vulnerability of large population to water, food, livelihood and health insecurity in densely populated lowlands. These changes may have enormous regional implications for fundamental human endeavours ranging from poverty alleviation to environmental sustainability and climate change adaptation, and even to peace and security both in  up-streams and down-streams. However, the exact impacts of climate change on mountain ecosystems, and the interlink-ages with other drivers of global change are yet to be investigated and properly understood. In view of this, the proposed workshop world the opportunity of sharing, exchanging and synthesizing the cutting edge most recent and critical knowledge to fill up this highly realized gap.

However, climate change adaptation plans conceived, formulated and implemented have not been effective so far as they are being implemented as stand-alone activity, and hence conflicting with other long-term developmental and resource management framework. It is therefore highly imperative to streamline climate adaptation into overall multilevel natural resource development planning processes to ensure sustainability and effective implementation of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction plans from local to regional levels.

The Conference will evaluate, demonstrate and synthesize the cutting edge recent knowledge on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction main-streaming; and assess its environmental, socio-economic and financial implications and complementarities.

The Conference will help in the identification and prioritization of effective climate change adaptation governance framework involving local and regional institutions; assessment of conflicts and complementarities related with mainstreaming adaptation processes; and formulation and demonstration of integrated climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and adaptive natural resource development management plan for high mountains.

Objectives

The main goals of the ADAPT! conference is to provide scientific platform for the synthesis of cutting edge most recent scientific and ground-based knowledge in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction mainstreaming that could help policy planning agencies to evolve effective  climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction plans for the mountain regions. In order to attain the above-mentioned broad goal, the Conference will focus on attaining the following objectives:

• To exchange and synthesize cutting edge recent knowledge on adaptive natural resource management, climate change adaptation and disaster risk mainstreaming in high mountains
• To provide opportunity to various stakeholder including policy and decision makers to share their adaptation needs and priorities with scientific community
• To assess the role of local, national and international institutions in climate change adaptation  governance in high mountains
• To identify framework for adaptive natural resource management and its integration with climate change adaptation and disaster risk mainstreaming in high mountains
• To help government agencies in evolving and implementing framework for integrating climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction into natural resource development planning

Expected Outcomes

The conference is expected to have the following outputs:

• A proceedings document highlighting the recommendations of the Conference which could be used for evolving effective plan for mainstreaming climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction into natural resource development planning
• A publication synthesizing the most recent cutting edge knowledge in the forms of conference proceeding, and a review of current state of knowledge on climate change adaptation mainstreaming
• A Policy framework to conceptualize, evolve and implement effective climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction governance

Key research areas

The conference will explore the following research areas:

• Water Resources: Conservation, Replenishment and Sustainable Utilization Water Resources; Drinking Water, Irrigation; Watershed and Spring-shed Development
• Forest and Biodiversity: Forest Resources Management; Biodiversity Conservation; Human-Wildlife Conflicts
• Land Resources: Land Use, Land Use Policy and Planning, Land Degradation; Land and Soil Conservation; Sustainable Land Resource Management
• Climate Change Impacts: Climate Change Impact and Vulnerability; Glaciers; Water, Agriculture, Food, Health, Livelihood, Tourism; Community Perception of Climate Change Impact; Gender Implications of Climate Change
• Climate Change and Natural Disasters: Extreme Weather Events; Landslides; Flood and Flash Flood; Drought; Disaster Resilient Socio-ecological System; Community based Disaster Risk Management; Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation
• Climate Change Adaptation and Mainstreaming: Climate Change Adaptation in Water, Agriculture, Food, Health, Livelihood, Urban and Tourism Sectors; Climate Change Adaptation Governance; Women and Climate Change Adaptation; Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation
• Environmental Impact Assessment: Environmental Monitoring; Environmental Auditing; Environmental Budgeting; Environmental Impact of Hydropower and other Projects
• Urban Environmental Challenges: Urban Ecosystems; Urban Landscape Planning; Mountain Urbanization; Urban Ecosystem Services; Urban Biodiversity; Sustainable Urban Water Management; Climate Smart Urban Development
• Environmental Governance: Environmental Conservation; Nature Based Solutions to Environmental Problems; Institutions and Environmental Governance; Sustainable Livelihood and Environmental Management; Environmental Education; Traditional Knowledge and Environmental Management