Anthropology of Climate and Environment: Building Understanding and Advocacy for Disaster, Adaptation and Resilience in the Himalaya

Abstract (English)

The Himalayas, often referred to as the "Third Pole," are experiencing profound changes due to climate change, significantly impacting the livelihoods, knowledge systems, adaptive capacities, and resilience of local people in mountain ecosystems. The region has a unique topography and climate. The Himalayas are located at extreme high altitudes with steep slopes which are vulnerable to landslides, flooding, erratic weather, and other hazards. The area is also known as the Hindukush Himalaya (HKH), which covers 3,500 km from Afghanistan in the West to Myanmar in the east. HKH critically provides water for ten major rivers and influences the rainfall of the region, which 240 million people of South Asia depend on for their livelihoods to provide vital ecosystem services. These mountains embody a rich variety of social, cultural, and linguistic practices as well as a high diversity of flora and fauna. Currently, the HKH exhibits frequent and intense natural hazards that impact the HKH, such as earthquakes, floods, glacial lake outburst floods, rising temperatures, and extreme weather events. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has clearly illustrated that high altitudes and latitudes are greatly vulnerable to climate change. The HKH region has been experiencing several compound disasters in recent years, where one disaster leads to and amplifies the next. Households have experienced losses of life and severe impacts to property, livestock, development infrastructures, and tangible and intangible heritage. This has resulted in several challenges to local livelihoods, social and cultural identities, and knowledge systems, which can also result in environmental degradation. At the same time, scholars are facing challenges in understanding these local impacts and advocating for household and community adaptation and resilience. Previous research has found that rural household experiences in these regions over the short- and long-term are shaped by intersecting vulnerabilities, such as social inequality and unsafe housing, and mitigated by adaptive capacities, such as local knowledge and cultural traditions, fostering some resilience to these hazards. Research has also indicated that out-migration, changes in livelihood strategies, new technologies adoption, and infrastructure development such as road building are the major phenomena taking place in this region. The aim of panel is to stimulate contemporary anthropological debates/discussions on the role of the Anthropology of Climate and Environment in the Himalayan region in order to develop policy and practices that address the previous and contemporary hazards to the diverse local populations with differing vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities. Advocacy related to the impacts of climate and environmental change on local lives and lifeways in the HKH region therefore need strengthening by amplifying these issues. This panel thus invites scholarly papers that fill knowledge gaps with innovative and progressive multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and discussion.