PR Web: University of Massachusetts Boston professor and leading conservation biologist Kamal Bawa and conservation photographer Sandesh Kadur announce the release of their book Himalaya: Mountains of Life. Five years in the making, the book focuses on the Eastern Himalaya—the first time the region’s threatened biodiversity and cultures have been documented together by a preeminent

[continue reading...]

360 Yale: Renowned biologist George Schaller has been traveling to the Tibetan Plateau for nearly three decades, studying its unique wildlife. But with climate change and overgrazing taking a toll on the landscape, he reports, scientists and the Chinese government are working to preserve one of the planet’s wildest places. Chang Tang. It is a

[continue reading...]

Dr. Sudhirendar Sharma’s opinion piece on an an ongoing discourse on ‘Flaw of Big Aid‘ at Climate Himalaya’s discussion platform . There are reasons why James Rinaldi article ‘Flaw of Big Aid’ did not provoke strong emotions from either those who provide ‘aid’ or those who are its recipients. Most of those to whom the

[continue reading...]

ICIMOD: The Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH) is a mountain system of extremes with great influence over the Asian continent. The system stretches 3,500 km over eight countries, from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar in the east. It is the world’s largest and highest mountain system, with more than 30 peaks measuring over 7,600 m.

[continue reading...]

The GLOBE Climate Legislation Study THIRD EDITION. A Review of Climate Change Legislation in 33 Countries. On 14 January 2013 the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International) released the 3rd Climate Legislation Study – produced in partnership with the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics. This is the most comprehensive research project that

[continue reading...]

A two days stakeholders workshop that was attended by over 130 stakeholders from 37 different institutes of 12 Indian Himalayan states, representatives of 7 State Governments, 27 Experts from various national and State level institutions, members of DST’s Expert and Steering committees, representatives of NGOs/Civil Society organizations, Senior officers of Central Ministries concluded at CSIR-

[continue reading...]

Sudhirendar Sharma Tagged as fragile, remote and marginal, these three aspects have featured prominently in discussions and deliberations concerning development in the mountains in our part of the world. Retired but active academician N S Jodha, a former senior staff with the Kathmandu-based Integrated Center for International Mountain Development, has been credited for using these

[continue reading...]

K N Vajpai: Writes on the expected outcomes from Durban Climate Change Conference (CoP 17)in terms of growing momentum of action and alarm bells from new researches. His discourse is about the meager role played by the leaders from most vulnerable regions like Himalayas and Andes during this important global conference.   With the representation

[continue reading...]

Guardian: Fears rise of huge outburst flooding in the Himalayas as glaciers melt due to climate change. It’s strangely calming to watch the Imja glacier lake grow, as chunks of ice part from black cliffs and fall into the grey-green lake below. But the lake is a high-altitude disaster in the making – one of

[continue reading...]

Noreen Haider: Writes from her visit to the beautiful Naran valley of Khyber Pakhtunkwa province in Pakistan, where she observes various dimensions of social and environment development. Noreen came across various developmental projects and activities in the region and finds that poor education and poorly planned social and environmental projects lead to acute poverty natural

[continue reading...]

The SERVIR Web Mapper allows you to access and display data or functionality from several external sources to create a new service. Using the Web Mapper interface, you can choose specific data sets and information products by type and date, display them on a base map, and further manipulate them for analysis. If a layer

[continue reading...]

The Bhutan Climate Summit for A Living Himalayas was successfully convened in Thimphu on 19 Nov 2011. Presided over by the Honourable Prime Minister of Bhutan, Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y Thinley; Environment Ministers from the four countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal adopted a declaration on behalf of their Governments wherein a regional ‘framework of

[continue reading...]

Washington Post: Amid regional tensions, only 4 of 7 Himalayan nations meet for climate summit on the mountains. Four Himalayan nations, faced with erratic weather and the threat of melting glaciers and catastrophic floods, are hashing out a plan for preserving the vast mountain range and helping millions living in the foothills cope with climate

[continue reading...]

UNDP Regional Centre: As a matter of national urgency, the Bhutanese Government – with assistance from an international climate change adaptation fund that was established by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and partner organizations such as the United Nations Development Programme, the Global Environment Facility, the World Wildlife Fund and the Government

[continue reading...]

Global Commission Charts Pathway For Achieving Food Security in Face of Climate Change. Scientific experts outline concrete steps toward a sustainable global food system. In the lead up to UN global climate talks in Durban, South Africa later this month, an independent global commission of eminent scientists today released a set of concrete recommendations to policy

[continue reading...]

Climate Change and Himalayan Cold Deserts: Mapping vulnerability and threat to ecology and indigenous livelihoods The remote cold desert stretches of high altitude Himalayas, having a fragile ecosystem are characterized by complex interplay of climatic and geo-morphological processes, availability of limited natural resources and economic  conditions leading to accelerated resource degradation and associated environmental consequences

[continue reading...]

MRD Journal: The Indus River Basin is characterized by downstream areas with the world’s largest irrigation system, providing food and energy security to more than 215 million people. The arid to semiarid basin is classified as a net water deficit area, but it also suffers from devastating floods. Among the four basin countries, Pakistan is

[continue reading...]

Practical Action: This briefing focuses on the impact of climate change on Nepal’s rural poor. A great deal has been written  on the challenges of providing clean energy and the risks to urban populations but, as this paper outlines, climate change also has many other consequences. Rural communities, whose livelihoods are intimately tied to the

[continue reading...]

Coinciding with Bhutan’s ‘Climate Summit for a Living Himalayas’, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, Royal Government of Bhutan, will hold a series of events to draw the attention of policy makers, government agencies, development agencies, community workers, youth and children to the potential for using remote

[continue reading...]

WWF: On the 19th of November the Royal Government of Bhutan will host the Climate Summit for a Living Himalayas Bhutan 2011. The event will bring together leaders from the governments of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal to agree upon and commit to a plan for adaptation to climate change. Included in the plan are

[continue reading...]

Brisbane Times: Time is running out for Kashmir’s premier tourist attraction, writes Ben Doherty, in Srinagar. Through the dawn mist, Dal Lake is beautiful. As the first shafts of sunlight break over the Himalayan foothills that hug the lake’s perimeter, the still waters are slowly brought alive by the silent ferrying of the shikaras back

[continue reading...]

Searching for scientific truth in the realm of climate. Last month the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project released the findings of its extensive study on global land temperatures over the past century. Physics professor Richard Muller, who led the study, heralded the findings with a number of controversial statements in the press, including an op-ed

[continue reading...]

The minutes of First meeting of the Working Group on “Mountain Eco-systems and Challenges Faced by the People living in the Hilly Areas” for formulation of the 12th Five year Plan” is given below, that was held on 28 October 2011 at Yojana Bhavan in New Delhi. It was chaired by Shri B.K. Chaturvedi, Member,

[continue reading...]

Dr. R. S. Tolia: Writes this article as his ‘Third Inning’,  days those have been happily spent on reflecting over and about mountains and mountain people. This has taken him to various mountainous parts of India, neighbouring Nepal and recently to the beautiful city and canton of Switzerland, Luzern, in the northern Alps.  Besides learning

[continue reading...]

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE : KATHMANDU, Oct 9: The world´s highest webcam has been installed in the Nepalese Himalayas, beaming live images of Mount Everest back to scientists studying the effects of climate change on the planet´s tallest peak. The solar-powered camera, set at 5,675 metres (18,618 feet) on Kala Patthar, a smaller mountain facing Everest,

[continue reading...]

Pabitra Mukhopadhyay: The gentleman in the payment kiosk swiped the card and gave it back to me. Then he asked my wife for the carry bag to pack the month’s provision. Carry bags? What?? You are not packing this into plastic bags? My wife looked puzzled. No ma’am, we are not giving away plastic bags

[continue reading...]

Sudhirendar Sharma: Even at the cost of being refuted, it wouldn’t be out of context to prophesize that globalization of climate change will convert the Himalaya into a new playground for capitalism! Not only will the Himalaya get converted into a repository of carbon to counter what others have voluntarily emitted but will charge for

[continue reading...]

The climate summit to be held in the capital on November 19 expects to adopt and endorse a 10-year road map for adaptation to climate change in the eastern Himalayas sub-region for ensuring food, water and energy security, and mechanisms to ensure financing and implementation of the road map. It also expects to make a

[continue reading...]

Shalini Dhyani: With depletion of agricultural lands due to shift in monsoon patterns, landslides, run off, regular leaching of nutrients, and drying up of natural springs and lack of irrigation facilities has resulted into uneconomical agriculture in the mountain regions of India. Most of the villages in mountains are witnessing migration at a very large

[continue reading...]

K N Vajpai: Much has been said about Himalayas and its beautiful mountains, rich biodiversity and rich culture. But, sometime it seems that the inhabitants in the region are not cognizant about this richness. Are they? Let me take one of the factors that contributed to such situation in Hindu Kush Himalayan region and that

[continue reading...]

Suman K: The Hindu Kush Himalayan Region spans eight countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Pakistan, India, Myanmar, Nepal and China. It is home to around 1000 living languages, 4 global biodiversity hotspots, 60 eco regions, 27 Ramsar wetland sites, and as many as 13 UNESCO heritage sites. The region covers 10 major river basins from

[continue reading...]

Pabitra Mukhopadhyay: When it becomes clear that the increasing risk of GLOFs is the outcome of a global trend in climate change and when it is known that the Hindu Kush Himalayan Region has far too many retreating glaciers leaving far too many glacial lakes that may turn into GLOFs, two realities emerge:  No single

[continue reading...]

Climate change is likely to spread malaria to new areas in the Indian Himalayas, and lengthen the periods in which the infection is spread in a number of districts, according to projections from malaria researchers in India.But the country’s east coast could see fewer malaria cases by 2030, because of rising temperatures which affect mosquitoes’

[continue reading...]

Sciencemag: A new study by the Indian Space Research Organization and the Geological Survey of India in Kolkata reports that although 21% of India’s Himalayan glaciers are showing no increase in melt rate, the majority are receding. The pattern is a worldwide phenomenon and part of a natural cyclic process, according to a statement from

[continue reading...]

EcoBusiness: The newest environmental superhero is a seven year old Himalayan girl named Ishi. Ishi, who lives in a small Indian village called Kaaza in the remote ice desert region of the Himalayas, is the star of an award-winning short film from Delhi filmmaker Nitin Das. The message of the film is as short and sweet as

[continue reading...]

Shalini Dhyani: Changes in the fragile mountain ecosystems affect local people who are very much dependent on agriculture and forests. The economy in major mountain regions of the world is mostly dependent on women, and they are among the important actors of change and holders of significant knowledge and skills, which makes them crucial actors

[continue reading...]

SCPR: The Imja Glacier is located in the Himalayan Khumbu Range of Eastern Nepal, southeast of Mount Everest. Greenpeace reports that this glacier is retreating at nearly 10 meters per year. Other reports show that the average temperature in Nepal has increased by 1.5 Celsius since 1975. Here the Imja Glacier is photographed as seen from

[continue reading...]

CCAFS: The build up to the Bhutan Climate Summit for a Living Himalayas received unprecedented response last week with the completion of expert group meetings on the key themes of water, biodiversity, food security and energy. The Bhutan Climate Summit is an initiative of the Royal Government of Bhutan, and will bring together leaders, decision

[continue reading...]

PTI: Studies conducted by Geological Survey of India indicate some of the likely impacts of melting of glaciers on the hydrological system in form of changes in the river hydrology, increased debris production and siltation of rivers in downstream region. However, no specific studies regarding the potential loss taking place as a result of melting

[continue reading...]

GeospatialWorld: “Climate change is a priority research area for the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) and India is on a mission mode to develop innovative solutions indigenously,” said Vilasrao Deshmukh, Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences. In this direction, the minister declared that MoES is setting up the National Monsoon Mission which

[continue reading...]

Shalini Dhyani: The Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) is home to 40 million people, which is 3.8% of the total population of India. Since independence, the system of democratic governance ushered in new institutional arrangements with some specific arrangements to protect and maintain socio-cultural identities of the mountain societies in the Indian Himalayan Region. A wide

[continue reading...]

K N Vajpai: In one of recently held international seminar in Pakistan, experts from various institutions of the world highlighted concerns related to various developmental processes, natural resource crisis and ignorance towards local governance system in the mountainous part of Himalaya. The experts highlighted the dependence of over 1.5 billion people in South Asia region

[continue reading...]

K N Vajpai: We boast, we host, and we are lost! It sounds the legacy of mighty Himalaya and its people. Here, agencies seem boasting the urgency and the welfare of mountain ecosystem (!), while people in the region are hosting their dialogues with utmost care, and then they are lost somewhere. The remains of

[continue reading...]

On the occasion of World Environment Day 2011, we prepared a very brief  note on the work of Climate Himalaya Initiative in advocating Mountain Agenda from Himalayan region . Our Take: Who will Fund our will! We don’t always require a project fund to set examples, spread ideas and make things happen! On this premise

[continue reading...]