Advancing Regional and Transboundary Cooperation in the Conflict-Prone Hindu Kush–Himalaya

Molden, David; Sharma, Eklabya; Shrestha, A. B.; Chettri, Nakul; Pradhan, Neera Shrestha; Kotru, Rajan

doi:10.1659/mrd-journal-d-17-00108.1

Cited by 38 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…On top of that, longterm precipitation changes may lead to changes in groundwater recharge and storage, which in turn will affect groundwater availability (Asoka et al, 2017). There are, however, large uncertainties in the projected precipitation changes due to the large spread among the different climate model runs (Arnell and Lloyd-Hughes, 2014;Lutz et al, 2016b;Moors et al, 2011;Wijngaard et al, 2017), which hampers the projection of future water supply rates. In addition to climate-induced changes in surface and groundwater supply, groundwater depletion is expected to intensify over the next decades due to socio-economic development (Rodell et al, 2009;Wada, 2016;Wada et al, 2010).…”

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confidence: 99%

Climate change vs. socio-economic development: understanding the future South Asian water gap

Wijngaard

Biemans

Lutz³

et al. 2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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The Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra (IGB) river basins provide about 900 million people with water resources used for agricultural, domestic, and industrial purposes. These river basins are marked as "climate change hotspots", where climate change is expected to affect monsoon dynamics and the amount of meltwater from snow and ice, and thus the amount of water available. Simultaneously, rapid and continuous population growth as well as strong economic development will likely result in a rapid increase in water demand. Since quantification of these future trends is missing, it is rather uncertain how the future South Asian water gap will develop. To this end, we assess the combined impacts of climate change and socio-economic development on the future "blue" water gap in the IGB until the end of the 21st century. We apply a coupled modelling approach consisting of the distributed cryospheric-hydrological model SPHY, which simulates current and future upstream water supply, and the hydrology and crop production model LPJmL, which simulates current and future downstream water supply and demand. We force the coupled models with an ensemble of eight representative downscaled general circulation models (GCMs) that are selected from the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, and a set of land use and socio-economic scenarios that are consistent with the shared socio-economic pathway (SSP) marker scenarios 1 and 3. The simulation outputs are used to analyse changes in the water availability, supply, demand, and gap. The outcomes show an increase in surface water availability towards the end of the 21st century, which can mainly be attributed to increases in monsoon precipitation. However, despite the increase in surface water availability, the strong socio-economic development and associated increase in water demand will likely lead to an increase in the water gap during the 21st century. This indicates that socio-economic development is the key driver in the evolution of the future South Asian water gap. The transgression of future environmental flows will likely be limited, with sustained environmental flow requirements during the monsoon season and unmet environmental flow requirements during the low-flow season in the Indus and Ganges river basins.

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confidence: 99%

Climate change vs. socio-economic development: understanding the future South Asian water gap

Wijngaard

Biemans

Lutz³

et al. 2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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“…The region has been in the spotlight as a part of "Crisis Ecoregions", "Endemic Bird Areas", "Mega Diversity Countries" and "Global 200 Ecoregions" (Brooks et al, 2006) and also hosts parts of four of the 36 Global Biodiversity Hotspots -Himalaya, Indo-Burma, Mountains of South-West China, and Mountains of Central Asia (Mittermeier, Turner, Larsen, Brooks, & Gascon, 2011;Noss et al, 2015) and a number of the Global 200 Ecoregions of the world (Dinerstein et al, 2017;Wikramanayake et al, 2002). Also, the region provides ecosystem services that sustain the lives and livelihoods of over 240 million people in the HKH and support over 1.7 billion people living downstream in the 10 river basins which emanate from these mountainous regions (Molden et al, 2017;Schild, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In recent decades, the HKH has witnessed significant conceptual development in regional approaches to biodiversity conservation. It evolved from "people exclusionary" and "species focused" to "peoplecentred community-based" and "ecosystem/landscape approach," as reflected by conservation policies and practices within the region (Chettri & Sharma, 2016;Molden et al, 2017;Sharma et al, 2010). The classical approach to biodiversity conservation, which started with an emphasis on the conservation of flagship species (e.g., Wikramanayake et al, 1998;Yonzon, 1989), evolved to the understanding that "conservation and management of biodiversity are impossible without people's participation" (Phuntsho, Chettri, & Oli, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They also have greater conservation significance due to their location in areas with higher biodiversity . Though there has been significant progress in the number and coverage of protected areas, conservation plans developed for protected areas usually encompass only one country because of logistical, institutional and political challenges (Chettri et al, 2010;Molden et al, 2017;Sharma et al, 2010). Thus, there was an urgent need to strengthen transboundary conservation planning strategies as many protected areas are interconnected across boundaries through processes that form, utilize and maintain interfaces or connectivity essential for the survival of some species (Forrest et al, 2012;Palomo, 2017;Pauchard et al, 2009;Tang et al, 2018;Wikramanayake et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Integrating geospatial tools and species for conservation planning in a data-poor region of the Far Eastern Himalayas

Uddin

Chettri

Yang

et al. 2019

Geology, Ecology, and Landscapes

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The Hindu Kush Himalayan region (HKH) is an important biodiversity repository with more than 488 protected areas covering 39% of the region's geographical coverage. However, a majority of them are small and isolated and are not large enough to address conservation challenges. About 20% of the protected areas are transboundary in nature. Conservation landscape planning based on habitat suitability is an essential step for landscape management, but there are limited data available from the Landscape Initiative for Far Eastern Himalayas (HI-LIFE). To rationalize the need for regional cooperation, this study used remote sensing (RS) data and a geographic information system (GIS) to estimate the habitat suitability for four globally significant speciesconsidering available but limited secondary information. The results showed variation in habitat suitability at an individual species level, but the combined map showed about 43% of the total area as a suitable habitat. Substantial amounts of suitable habitat also recorded from outside the existing protected areas. The results also highlighted the fact that 75.40% of the existing forest within the landscape is intact, the majority of which is outside the existing protected areas. Thus, there is a strong rationale and opportunity to strengthen regional cooperation to safeguard irreplaceable and unique biodiversity resources of this wilderness landscape.

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“…Bottom-up strategies, targeted for example at stakeholders and civil society organisations [13], in which scientific collaboration informs and encourages transnational political cooperation, have proved useful in other transboundary basins such as the Danube [180,183], although differences in the underlying political regimes would require such strategies to be tailored to the region. Recent initiatives for the Himalayan region such as a joint monitoring and an assessment programme which promotes transboundary collaborations and highlights the importance of research outcomes to inform action (HIMAP; [184]), are especially promising.…”

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confidence: 99%

Current Practice and Recommendations for Modelling Global Change Impacts on Water Resource in the Himalayas

Momblanch

Holman

Jain

2019

Water

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Global change is expected to have a strong impact in the Himalayan region. The climatic and orographic conditions result in unique modelling challenges and requirements. This paper critically appraises recent hydrological modelling applications in Himalayan river basins, focusing on their utility to analyse the impacts of future climate and socio-economic changes on water resource availability in the region. Results show that the latter are only represented by land use change. Distributed, process-based hydrological models coupled with temperature-index melt models are predominant. The choice of spatial discretisation is critical for model performance due to the strong influence of elevation on meteorological variables and snow/ice accumulation and melt. However, the sparsity and limited reliability of point weather data, and the biases and low resolution of gridded datasets, hinder the representation of the meteorological complexity. These data limitations often limit the selection of models and the quality of the outputs by forcing the exclusion of processes that are significant to the local hydrology. The absence of observations for water stores and fluxes other than river flows prevents multi-variable calibration and increases the risk of equifinality. The uncertainties arising from these limitations are amplified in climate change analyses and, thus, systematic assessment of uncertainty propagation is required. Based on these insights, transferable recommendations are made on directions for future data collection and model applications that may enhance realism within models and advance the ability of global change impact assessments to inform adaptation planning in this globally important region.

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Advancing Regional and Transboundary Cooperation in the Conflict-Prone Hindu Kush–Himalaya

Abstract: BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access titles in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences published by nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses.

Cited by 38 publications

References 2 publications

Climate change vs. socio-economic development: understanding the future South Asian water gap

Climate change vs. socio-economic development: understanding the future South Asian water gap

Integrating geospatial tools and species for conservation planning in a data-poor region of the Far Eastern Himalayas

Current Practice and Recommendations for Modelling Global Change Impacts on Water Resource in the Himalayas

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