Started 2010, ‘Climate Himalaya’ initiative has become one important reference for governments, research institutions, civil society groups and international agencies having work and interest in the Himalayas. With thematic areas like mountain ecosystem, water, forest and livelihood, the Climate Himalaya team innovates on knowledge sharing, capacity building and climatic adaptation in its focus countries of Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan.
Fostering Knowledge, Innovation and Climatic Adaptation in Himalayan Region
Recognizing the climatic changes and their impacts in Himalayan Mountains, Prakriti a mountain environment group based in Rudraprayag district of Uttarakhand, India started a Pan-Himalayan initiative called ‘Climate Himalaya’ to divest its efforts in Sustainable Mountain Development. The initiative was launched formally on June 5, 2010 at IIT Roorkee (Uttarakhand, India) on the occasion of World Environment Day in partnership with Indian Water Resources Society (IWRS) and Times Foundation New Delhi, with the representation from Andes and Himalayan countries like Chile, India and Nepal.
The Need
It is evident that the Hindu Kush Himalayan region is in a state of crisis, affecting the population vulnerable under various environmental changes. The region lacks coordinated and comprehensive research about the scale and extent of such worsening changes, whereas the library of any such research on various aspects, wherever available, remains a great deal academic and policy implementations on various scientific and developmental fronts are largely disjointed.
It is felt that the research done in an uncoordinated manner is the reason why knowledge is not shared effectively in the region. There are sheer knowledge gap and lack of understanding on various mountain and climate linked issues, while no adequate shared understanding and action plan are in place for the regional problems as a whole, and no map of potential risks. It has also been observed that there is either missing or disconnected leadership among various stakeholders in Himalayas. Despite financial investment the results are deficient in making a difference due to inadequate planning, poor implementation quality and outreach actions.
Our Vision
To serve as a link between practice, science, policy and decision making towards climate change and sustainable mountain development.
Our Mission
Our mission is to work on knowledge networking through innovative means to develop adaptation actions in Himalayan region.
Closing Knowledge Gap
The Climate Himalaya initiative works towards the need of closing the knowledge gap in the Himalayan region by developing a knowledge sharing platform, strengthening the capacities of people and organizations, generating awareness and developing leadership. We work on a broader framework of fostering knowledge, innovation and climate change adaptation.
Scope of Work
Countries of Work: India, Bhutan, Nepal and Pakistan (initially) China and Bangladesh (in future) through partner’s and various stakeholder’s involvement.
Thematic Areas: Mountain Ecosystem, Water, Forest and Livelihood
Focal Actions: Awareness generation, Knowledge networking, Capacity building and Research.
Our Work
The initiative envisions a systematic reform in the present environmental governance system in Himalayan Mountains, working closely with volunteers and partners in building an interactive platform, scientific and practitioners’ database and a vibrant leadership network. It also keeps the mountain people updated about various climate change adaptation and mitigation processes in the region. As our first phase of activities we are working on knowledge sharing, networking and outreach activities since 2010. A brief note of various completed and ongoing actions are;
1. Development Of Knowledge Platform
The Climate Himalaya team developed a knowledge sharing portal in year 2010, which by now has over 4200 articles in 80 different categories and over 200 downloadable publications on climate change and mountain development issues, collected from various sources.
The viewership of Climate Himalaya’s (CHI) portal by now is over 2, 00,000, and it has a regular readership of 500+ per day mostly from South Asia and also from other parts of the world. Our readers mostly consist of internet users in Government, CSOs/NGOs, Research institutions, Universities, donors, bi-lateral and multi-lateral organizations. The CHI portal is used mostly by individuals and agencies in planning, research, developing capacity building material among others.
2. Mountain 2020 Campaign (M-20)
The author’s columns under our Mountain 2020 campaign on various climate change issues from Himalayan region and around the world. Seven Youth Speakers, 8 Guest speakers and Expert speakers wrote about 70 policy, action and research based articles exclusively at Climate Himalaya’s Knowledge portal under its M-20 Campaign.
We also send daily and weekly updates to our members (350 in numbers and growing), while manage a network group of about 500 members.
3. Outreach Activities
Since June 2010, we had outreach activities in Australia, Bangkok, Bhutan, India, Nepal and UK, while raised mountain voice in various national, regional and global networks. A few include; Adaptation network Asia, Mountain forum global, Mountain Partnership, UN solution Exchange, European Journalism Centre, IUCN Biodiversity Media Alliance, Earth Journalism Centre, Eldis Knowledge Network, etc.
4. Other Activities
Celebrated the day with TERI in Delhi in 2010 and covered events in our knowledge portal specifically on this event from Nepal, US, Uganda, Croatia, Pakistan, Iran, Italy and Peru. The initiative is active partner to UNEP supported Asia Pacific Adaptation Network and was media partner to Climate 2011 conference that held in Germany.
We ran an opinion poll and a debate on sustainable mountain development and launched a Himalaya focused policy advocacy campaign (M-20) in context to CoP17, RIO +20 and International Decade of Bio-diversity 2011-2020.
5. Mountain Trail during UN Climate Change Conference
The Cancun MountainTrails2010 and CoP 17 DurbanTrails2011 were the activities we covered during both International Climate Change conference of UNFCCC. For Durban Trail Dr. C. S. Silori of RECOFTC Bangkok, Thailand directly wrote columns at Climate Himalaya’s knowledge portal on updates.
6. Mountain Voice
A multimedia information communication project that is scheduled to be launched by Climate Himalaya by the end of May 2012. Through this project we are trying to ensure that the climate linked science and adaptation measures are communicated to the communities through videos, audio-visuals and other interactive media and also that the voices of mountain people from the countries like Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan is shared with the world. It includes video clips, webcam talks, conversations, presentation, among others.
7. Discussion Forum
The CHI team has been running a discussion forum since Feb 2012 that now has 4 major discussion topics of ‘Mountain Perspective’ (a discourse on 20 year old perspective of Dr. N S Jodha), Development of framework for Government and Business partnership, water resources and mountain communities-a business model, and over exploitation of mountain bio-diversity and its protection.
Our Network
All our activities mentioned did not involve direct financing from donors or network partners, but we worked it through common vision of mountain development and climate change with agencies like Zee News, Times Foundation, Third Pole/Chinadialogue, Aaranyak, Savethe Seeds Movement, Asia Pacific Adaptation Network, UNFCCC’s Nairobiwork programme, WeADAPT, Forest Carbon Asia, CHEA, to name a few.
We shared our common vision and work on awareness generation, sustainable mountain development, knowledge networking, natural resource management, knowledge sharing, capacity building and leadership development. We got financial support to attend meetings and conferences during our outreach activities as individual from Climate Himalaya.
Support
In last two years, neither we sought, nor we felt the need of external financial support to implement, develop and expand our actions. All the activities were carried out through the financial support of our volunteers, while we got travel support from the organizers of various events wherever we participated. We also vouch upon and highly thankful for the voluntary support provided by our honorary contributors those are consistently writing at our Youth Speak, Expert Speak and Guest Speak columns .
Our Take: Who Funds our will…!
With a belief that we don’t always require project funds to set examples, spread ideas and make things happen, we launched Climate Himalaya in 2010, and in about less than two years we succeeded in raising voice on various mountain and climate change issues through our knowledge networking, knowledge sharing and partnership building actions. We could see that our voice has made substantial difference in advocating various important policy aspects on knowledge management and institutional networking.
Future Support
We are now looking forward for a long term support and partnership with interested agencies/donors to support Climate Himalaya in long term basis to implement our planned and ongoing actions like ‘Mountain 2020 Campaign’, support the Knowledge Portal fully, support our ‘Mountain Voice’ and Discussion Forum (ongoing), Mountain Voice project and planned climate change courses. Apart from this we are looking for support on the development of IEC material.
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